


Underdog

by beetle



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anger Management, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Boxing Noir, Dom/sub, Dominance, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Issues, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, For once Reyes is NOT the more dysfunctional of the pair, Graphic Description, Hints of past-Shakarian, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Meet-Not-At-All-Cute, Painplay, Past Rape/Non-con, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Prostitution, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Shakarian UST, Switching, Underground Fight Club, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:39:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: The first rule of Kadara Projects Fight Club is. . . .





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotot/gifts), [stitchcasual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/gifts).



> Notes/Warnings: Present-day underground fight club AU. Graphic violence and eventual rough sex. Prompt in end notes.

 

The new kid’s a mangler, but that’s _not_ why Sloane’s lieutenant notices him.

 

Not really.

 

Though . . . _yes_ , really. Because the first time Reyes Vidal, half-drunk—but never _all-the-way_ drunk . . . the one and only time he’d ever been all-the-way drunk had been a painful object- and life-lesson he has no interest in relearning—sees the kid, he _notices him_ , too. And it’s entirely because of the hype surrounding this new underdog. Or rather, the hype that the _crowd_ has clearly heard about him.

 

Reyes is, for once, at the leading edge of said crowd of bruisers and betters, which demarcates the place where the ring ends and the “stands” begin. The floor is tacky-sticky with dirt and fluids, the least gross of which are spit and blood. Random teeth shine, white and off-white, here and there.

 

Reyes is in a fine mood and in his element, as ever. The world is _sparkling_ . . . even with its grime and stink and despair.

 

He’s mostly watching the crowd for reactions, as he tends to do, rather than the fights. It’s not that he hasn’t the stomach for the fights—frankly, Reyes has seen and done _far_ worse than two guys beating the ever-loving shit out of each other, and he finds pointless pugilism rather quaint and reassuring—no, it’s that they bore him. Just thugs and overconfident cowards pummeling each other until _true_ characters are revealed and someone taps out.

 

It’s all quite _jejune_. But Reyes is expected to be there, representing his boss, so, _there_ , he is. At least three nights out of seven, keeping his own counsel and placing no bets. He’d rather waste his hard-earned cash on booze.

 

But this night is . . . different.

 

From the moment the kid shoulders his way through the crowd—which, for some reason, despite being peopled with the worst sort of dregs even the Kadara Projects has to offer, parts for him with a sense of uneasy anticipation—to the ring, which is basically a roughly circular section of filthy floor marked off with bright-red duct tape, Reyes is . . . intrigued.

 

Then, the front of the crowd parts and Reyes gets his first look at the kid.

 

He’s on the short side of average height, maybe five-foot-eight. His frame is wide and solid, like a heavy-weight boxer’s, but rangy and underfed. He’s all ropey muscle strung over dense bone and a veritable cloud of shit-attitude. His broad shoulders are slightly hunched and give him an air of weariness, despite their obvious strength. Of resignation. His skin is slightly paler than Reyes’s own caramel-shaded complexion, lightly-sheened with sweat in the humidity of the night and the room. His shoulder-blades are prominent, but not sharp. Blunt and deadly, like the blades of old axes. Dark, shaggy, none-too-clean hair, pin-straight and thick, hangs to his shoulders like an ink-black curtain, obscuring his face, but for an aquiline nose. His hands, large and dangerous-looking, clench and unclench at his sides, wrapped in dirty, gunky-bloody white tape.

 

He’s wearing nothing but a pair of old, grungy jeans that hang low on his narrow hips and off the modest curve of his ass, and a pair of ancient, gray work-boots that are probably steel-toed. The laces aren’t tied, but neither do they drag, to trip their owner at some crucial point.

 

Taking a sip from his plastic cup—just a Jack and Coke, since the night is still young—Reyes eyes this new contender with the kind of curiosity that burns low in his gut and the base of spine . . . that sings through his blood and his balls.

 

The person doing the announcing tonight—and quite often, lately—is Umi Henon, one of the few retired fighters who _hasn’t_ been _retired_ in some . . . unsavory and permanent way. She’s tough as nails and not easily surprised. Reyes can’t make out what she’s saying as the kid looks down at the ring of duct tape for long moments, as if having never seen its like before. Then, the crowd is cheering and surging as, from the opposite side of the ring, the other contender—the champion—enters the ring. Axel or Aksul, or something similarly nineteen eighty-five and accompanied by the theme from _Beverly Hills Cop_. He, too, is brawny, but unlike the kid, not underfed. He’s all muscle and agility, disdain and confidence.

 

 _He’s going to eat this kid alive_ , Reyes thinks with something that’s not quite regret, not quite compassion. And just as he thinks it, the kid looks up from his contemplation of the damned duct tape and in Reyes’s direction.

 

Only for a moment, after which he glances ahead of him, at the ring and at Axel/Aksul. The blond, Aryan-handsome fighter is dancing and weaving, already, his cold, blood-thirsty smirk firmly affixed to his square-jawed face. But Reyes only absently notes this. In his mind, he’s still meeting the dispassionate, almost disinterested, amber eyes of the new kid. Long and almond-shaped, hooded and intense, those eyes—that stare—is branded onto Reyes’s brain instantly. Those _eyes_ , in their keen, angular face—but young . . . so _young_ —with all the softness and innocence of a blooded machete, will _always_ be with Reyes. So, too, those high, wide-planed cheekbones, that sharp, strong jaw, and stereotypical, cigar-store Indian chin. But especially . . . especially those eyes. He knows this with more certainty than he knows his own name.

 

Reyes closes _his_ eyes for a moment as the room seems to spin wildly . . . then settle. When he opens them, the kid is in the ring, hitching up his jeans with slow, labored motions while Axel/Aksul continues to dance. Only now, the big bruiser’s laughing, too. Laughing at the fresh meat that’s been sent in against him.

 

The kid doesn’t seem to notice. Merely snorts, then horks and spits, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. His broad shoulders roll smoothly, slowly and unhurried, as if he’s about to shift a love seat, not take on Sloane Kelly’s champion fighter.

 

Said champion engages, as always, in shit-talking, sending out feelers for his opponent’s weakspots. The kid gives absolutely nothing, keeping his eyes on the floor. He runs a hand through that dusty-dusky hair, pushing it back off his brow, which is prominent over his deep-set eyes. His face is still completely without expression.

 

Umi yells something else into the mic, something that makes the crowd roar its anticipation. And Umi, never one for long speeches or intros, rings the bell.

 

Axel/Aksul is overconfident and a jackass, but he’s not stupid. He has the instincts of a predator, if not an uber-predator. He feints forward and to the left, trying, no doubt, to goad the kid into making a move. But the kid merely stands there and stares at the floor, as if he’s not really present.

 

Another feint and duck, but this time, Axel/Aksul adds a lightning jab to the combo. He’s already danced out of the spot he’d occupied, before the blow lands in the kid’s unguarded solar plexus—Axel/Aksul’s usual M.O.—only . . . the blow _doesn’t_. Land, that is.

 

Because Axel/Aksul isn’t the only one who’s _gone_.

 

The only way to describe what the kid does, is to say _he moves_. But it seems such a trite and inadequate word for motion as graceful, fluid, and _holymotherofgodfast_ as the economic sidestep the kid does to evade the blow which, in comparison, looks about as quick as a turtle walking uphill with shoes made of melting lard.

 

The kid is _so_ fast, the surprise doesn’t even have time to register for any of the spectators, including Reyes, before the kid’s whirling around in the midst of moving, just a blur of dark skin and flat, but focused— _raging_ . . . and . . . so . . . very . . . _cold_ —gaze. He swings almost negligently from his left shoulder, digging but shallowly for reach, yet still with some solid force. His fist, big and bony, and as mean and spare as the rest of him, impacts Axel/Aksul’s right kidney.

 

For a few moments, the silence in the club is . . . deafening. Even Umi has been shocked silent.

 

Axel/Aksul, coughing and clutching his side, is gaping at the kid with wide, round blue eyes. Or the place where the kid _had_ been standing.

 

By the time the blond bruiser realizes his peril and starts to turn toward where the kid _really_ _is_ , it’s just in time for an uppercut like an anvil to the fucking jaw.

 

Silence, again, as Axel/Aksul crashes to the floor, unconscious and with his handsome jaw wildly askew.

 

The Unsinkable has been sunk. Like the Titanic. And he will _not_ be getting up on his own any time soon.

 

The kid, his gaze gone mild and indifferent again, dull and disinterested, stares at the fallen champion for a few seconds before hitching up his jeans once more, stepping over the recumbent loser, and striding toward Reyes.

 

Out of the ring and _past_ Reyes—whose breath catches, anyway—eyes on the floor, once more. Into the crowd, all terrible posture and listless affect, without making eye-contact. He leaves behind only stunned silence and the acrid, slightly rank scent of his perspiration: like infrequent bathing and cold-sweat nightmares for weeks on end.

 

The crowd parts for him without hesitation and Reyes watches him go, stone-sober now, with his mouth hanging open slightly. He’s not the only one. There are fine scars all up and down the kid’s back, crisscrossed and hatched—more like slashes rather than lashes. Reyes only just notices them because of the way the light hits the kid’s sweaty back. And though speculation is one of his many honed and refined talents—his bread and butter, some days—Reyes doesn’t quite have the presence of mind to imagine what and why those scars.

 

And then, that broad, slightly bowed back is gone out the side door and Reyes, like everyone else in the room, is left turning to stare with stunned incredulity, at an unconscious Axel/Aksul.

 

But, _unlike_ everyone else, Reyes, at least, hasn’t lost his shirt because of this new kid, this mangler, this . . . underdog.

 

Reyes finishes his drink without tasting it, while Umi, and Sloane’s other, lower-level boys, handle the angry betters and clean up what’s left of Axel/Aksul the Unsinkable. Then he makes his way to the back of the crowd, and toward the side door through which the underdog had left. Cleaving to the shadows—as ever—he cuts through the thick atmosphere like a knife made of charming, yet unremarkable man, his dark eyes glinting in the dim murk. Excitement and acquisitiveness that are as irrational and powerful as a phobia, make his face flush and his blood run hot, while his hands remain cool, steady, and battle-ready even without a weapon.

 

To let this kid disappear, and not satisfy his own burning . . . well, Reyes settles for _curiosity_ as an adequate descriptor . . . is—though he’s not ready to ponder _why_ —quite unthinkable.

 

TBC


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And after the fight . . . a sparring-match of a different sort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Violence and eventual rough sex.

 

When Reyes lets himself into the cramped, windowless storage closet that serves as the prep-room for contenders who _aren’t_ Sloane’s champion, the kid’s standing in the center of the room, facing away from the door. His broad, scarred back is bowed and hunched as if expecting a blow that, apparently, only a fool would attempt to deliver.

 

The room is mostly bare, but for a folding table and two chairs, one on either end of said table. The table, itself, has gauze, tape, peroxide, and other pre- and post-fight necessaries, and a pile of dull, gray and green cloth.

 

His customary ironic smirk firmly in place, Reyes shuts the door quietly, but not so quietly the kid won’t hear it if, indeed, he hadn’t heard it open. The last thing either of them wants is for the kid to swing on Sloane Kelly’s second-in-command.

 

“You look like you’re waiting for someone,” Reyes notes calmly, and the kid gives an all-over twitch, like a spooked dog, and a deep shudder. Other than that, he doesn’t reply to the friendly, only slightly teasing gambit. Merely turns his head marginally toward Reyes for a moment, then looks down. Clenches his outsized, mangler-hands, then begins peeling off the tape around the left one. There’s more blood on it—Axel/Aksul’s blood—than aught there had been.

 

“That was . . . some fight,” Reyes tries again, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s known for some time of his own deep-seated nervousness, and its tendency to manifest as fidgeting and edginess. He doesn’t like having tells—at least obvious ones. Crossing his arms—though a tell, in and of itself—is less obvious than knuckle-cracking and thumb-twiddling.

 

The kid drops the used tape on the floor and goes to work on his right hand with a soft, terse grunt. “If you wanna call what happened a _fight_ , sure,” is his reply in a surprisingly pleasant, smooth tenor that’s young and untried— _sweet and easy,_ in a way those flat, amber eyes had not been.

 

Half-shocked that he receives an answer at all, Reyes’s smirk deepens and he relaxes a bit, eyeing the kid once more, from dirty hair to dirty boots. Though his gaze lingers at those thin, cross-hatched scars marching up and down, left and right across the kid’s muscular back, and those impressive, not-quite-hulking shoulders.

 

“Is there something I can help you with?” The kid’s tone is polite and utterly incurious. Reyes is yet again helplessly intrigued. He finds himself rather intensely invested in teasing some sort of definite and genuine reaction from this contained kid. The question becomes, of course, what tools will Reyes use for said teasing: carrot, or stick?

 

As he ponders this, he manufactures a throaty, flirty chuckle. “Hmmm. That remains to be seen. But allow me to introduce myself . . . Reyes Vidal, at your service.”

 

The kid’s still not looking at him, so Reyes dispenses with his patented sardonic bow.

 

“I know who you are, Mr. Vidal.” More dirty tape drops to the floor and the kid flexes those dangerous hands. After a few seconds, those strong shoulders hunch further, and the kid reaches for the pile of dull cloth on the table butting the wall he faces. He slowly pulls on a grimy, grey wife-beater that may have been white, once upon a time, then a camo-pattered army jacket that’d be very retro, were it not so obviously a hand-me-down.

 

Rolling his shoulders, the kid turns to face Reyes. His affect is still bland and unreadable, flat and uncaring. His almond-shaped, amber eyes are as hard and mesmerizing as the stone they resemble, trapping Reyes like a stupid, unwary fly.

 

But Reyes is an old hand at maintaining his game-face. _If_ he’s . . . a tad overwhelmed by this kid’s presence, he’d sooner die than _show_ _it_. Even to himself.

 

“Then you have me at a disadvantage,” he purrs, quirking his right eyebrow. “You got a name to go with that impressive uppercut?”

 

Those amber eyes narrow slightly, something wary and cold flickering in them so fast, even _Reyes_ can’t quite read it . . . other than being left with the strong feeling that this kid could literally take him or leave him—kill him or walk away—with little effort, or appreciable effect on his placid-seeming psyche.

 

It’s unexpectedly thrilling and . . . vaguely arousing.

 

Then, the kid is glancing down at the floor, as he so often seems to, his prominent brow furrowing slightly.

 

“Ryder,” he finally mumbles after his thin, spare mouth works for almost half a minute. He seems so uncertain and reluctant, Reyes instinctively knows that this is not only _not_ a ring-name, but also not an _alias_.

 

What Reyes _doesn’t_ know is why he’s so flattered and . . . _heartened_ by that . . . but he is. He’s just not sure he likes or trusts that unfamiliar feeling. It all but smacks of a sentimentality that few in Kadara can afford . . . least of all Sloane Kelly’s top man.

 

Fighting harder to keep his smirk than he’s had to in a _very_ long time, Reyes straightens and ducks his head a little, in an attempt to catch the kid’s— _Ryder’s_ —intensely troubled, strangely absent, but undeniably compelling gaze. “While that’s an . . . interesting, and . . . wonderfully _suggestive_ name, _you_ need something a bit more . . . intimidating for the ring. Assuming you intend to make a _habit_ of dropping Sloane’s best fighters seventeen seconds into the match.”

 

When Ryder looks up suddenly, as if having forgotten, for a little bit, where he was and that he wasn’t alone, he scowls, and huffs irritably.

 

“Depends on if I need more cash,” he decides with indifference so towering, it’s undoubtedly put-on. Reyes’s smirk becomes another almost-smile as he realizes he’s found a tiny—if, as yet, unexploitable—chink in the kid’s titanium armor.

 

“The more you fight, the more lucrative the winnings become,” he agrees serenely. “The purse for _this_ fight is peanuts, compared to what you’d make if you kept moving up the figurative ladder of success. And if you signed on, as it were, with Sloane. Axel’s good—or was—but he’s not, by far, the best in the city. Not even the best in the Kadara Projects.” _But_ you _could be._

 

Though silent, the addendum rings in the air between them like Umi’s bell.

 

“No. Not the best,” the kid eventually allows with distracted, but glowering intensity. He doesn’t, however take Reyes’s flattery or bait, his gaze shifting to the distance beyond Reyes’s right shoulder for a few moments. Then, that gaze snaps back to Reyes’s face, measuring and piercing . . . quite unexpectedly _calculating_ in a way that Reyes feels in his marrow, and in the instantly kindled response from his suddenly flushed body.

 

“Would you . . . care to join me for a drink?” he finds himself asking in a voice that’s rather embarrassingly hopeful and breathless. The kid blinks, his lowering brows lifting in surprise as naked and somehow . . . _innocent_ . . . as a child’s. Reyes clears his throat and cranks up the smirk, once more. “To . . . celebrate your momentous victory.”

 

Something about the kid’s hard, stark face softens—whether it’s the firm, unyielding line of his wide mouth, the furrow of his brow, or the tightness of his jaw—and Reyes gets the distinct feeling that the kid— _Ryder_ —is laughing at him, on the inside. Or at least smirking very obnoxiously.

 

“I don’t drink.”

 

“Too young?”

 

Ryder snorts, little-shit snarky. “Too _smart_.”

 

Reyes chuckles wryly, acknowledging Ryder’s unintentionally scored point without allowing all the shit from his own past to swamp him with panic, pain, and regret. “You _do_ seem to have a . . . singular focus. That’ll serve you well in and out of the ring.”

 

Ryder’s eyes narrow as if he suspects he’s being mocked, then he blinks and scowls down at Reyes’s boots—not _so_ different from Ryder’s, but in far better up-keep.

 

“If you’d like, Ryder . . . we _could_ dispense with the alcohol, all together,” Reyes hints lightly, casually, all his intentions in his eyes, rather than his tone. But Ryder doesn’t look up.

 

“I don’t do drugs, either, Mr. Vidal.” Faint-but-there anger in the kid’s clipped words. Reyes’s smirk turns wry and almost sad. This kid, this . . . _Ryder_ is a dizzying mix of apathy and cynicism, pride and naivete that Reyes wants in more ways than is wise, and more intensely than is practical.

 

“Neither do I, Ryder. Drugs have an unfortunately . . . debilitating effect on the libido that I find intolerable.”

 

Now, those eyes tick _immediately_ to Reyes’s. The keen intelligence shining out of them so clearly, after almost nothing but that blank, flat stare, is breathtaking in a very literal sense.

 

Naïve? Perhaps. In some ways. But not stupid. And definitely _not_ slow on the uptake.

 

The kid’s mouth works again and he blinks rapidly and repeatedly, while Reyes watches and _wants_.

 

“I. . . .” another huff, seemingly torn between exasperation and amusement. “I don’t need cash _quite_ that badly, Mr. Vidal.”

 

“Ouch!” Reyes pouts and chuckles, putting his hand over his heart in faux-dismay. “Be that as it may, Ryder . . . you’re a _striking_ young man, but I . . . wasn’t offering to _pay_ for your company.”

 

Ryder’s left brow quirks up and that’s _definitely_ amusement shining out of his eyes, now. “Not even worth a _little_ of your ill-gotten gains, am I?”

 

“Oh, undoubtedly, you are,” Reyes admits without demurring, then goes on without hubris. “But then, _I’m_ _certainly_ worth some of _yours_. If you cared to, we could view it as an . . . even swap of goods and services.”

 

Ryder snorts: a stifled laugh, that’s both a decline and a dismissal. “Not looking to do any . . . swapping, tonight.”

 

“Then, you could consider me the . . . hero’s prize, as it were.”

 

“The bad-guy defeated _and_ a night with the hot guy?” Another mouth-tic not-smile. “Do I also get a magic sword?”

 

Reyes smirks at several of Ryder’s word choices. He suspects Ryder isn’t entirely aware that he's let that telling adjective, _hot_ , slip out so . . . earnestly and wistfully. “Perhaps. I’m a man who’s known for making the seemingly impossible happen.”

 

“Yes. Your reputation precedes you.” Irony drier than the Sahara. Reyes grins.

 

“Then you’ve undoubtedly heard that I’m a _fantastic_ lay and _very_ good with my mouth.”

 

Ryder’s eyes almost widen at this clearly unexpected bluntness. _Almost_. But instead, after a moment of startlement and wariness, he forces another scowl, somewhat watered down, and focuses an almost confused glare on the floor.

 

Reyes _doesn’t_ sigh and _doesn’t_ roll his eyes in sudden frustration. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all. “Or . . . you could just go to Umi and collect your winnings with my sincere hope that you’ll choose to . . . grace us with your presence again, sometime soon,” he forces himself to say cavalierly, with his customary lack of fucks given.

 

Another unreadable expression flickers on that face, there and gone in less than a heartbeat. “Or that,” Ryder says evenly. Then, with another grunt, his face and eyes lose whatever little animation had temporarily livened them, his affect going flat and disinterested once more. Reyes, ever attuned to social cues, moves aside from the door without hesitation, all ironic deference. Ryder’s amber eyes flicker, fast and unreadable, one last time, and the left corner of his ungenerous mouth tics. Then, rolling those strong, stooped shoulders, he’s striding to the door, all relaxed power and terrible slouch.

 

He opens the creaking door, and the tiny room is filled briefly with the sounds of cheers and boos, and the bell. Ryder steps into the arena again after a barely noticeable pause, probably to let his eyes adjust to the dimness.

 

 _Don’t forget to count your winnings before you walk away, Ryder,_ he almost calls after the kid, but doesn’t. Ryder’s not likely to make that rookie-mistake, and if he does, well . . . he’ll certainly never make it _twice_.

 

Then the door is pulled shut behind the kid, firm, but not hard, leaving Reyes standing in the prep-room alone . . . but for the kid’s sweaty-rank scent, and the used and bloody tape. And, of course, the distinct and electrifying feeling that, for once, Reyes Vidal has been neatly snared and subtly out-played.

 

TBC


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another night and another fight. Reyes gets another peek—dangerous and unexpected—behind Ryder’s armor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Violence and eventual rough sex.

 

The next match Reyes sees Ryder at isn’t the next match-up Reyes attends.

 

There’s a total of four match-ups, each with many rounds and fighters, between the first time their paths cross and the second. Reyes has been attending every night he can, as his duties permit, in the hopes of seeing the mysterious underdog again.

 

It isn’t until the eleventh night that he gets his wish.

 

Standing at the leading edge of the crowd, stone-sober, face set not in his usual, enigmatic half-smile or knowing smirk, but a grim and impatient frown, his gaze ticks from the current match-up—some English kid called Liam and some other guy, not as new and from Kadara, who goes only by _Jaal_ —to the DJ booth set off to the side.

 

From the moment Umi rings the bell and Liam bounces eagerly into the fight against eerie-still and unreadable Jaal, Reyes has called the match. He doesn’t bother watching Liam slowly, then less slowly lose ground to Jaal. He makes his way through the crowd, to the booth where Umi, is sitting, flipping through a battered, grimy old _Penthouse_ backwards, half-turned away from the match.

 

“ _WHOA! SAVE SOME FOR THE NEXT MATCH, BOYS!”_ she leans toward her old-timey mic to crow with semi-sarcastic delight at the match she’s purportedly watching. Meanwhile, on the pages of Penthouse, a blonde is baring her soul and then some for the camera. Reyes and Umi tilt their heads a little to the right, gaping and not-so-low-key goggling as a bit more of the blonde becomes evident from this slightly different angle.

 

“Damn,” Umi mutters, half-awed, half-amused. Reyes snorts.

 

“Seconded. Her parents must be so proud.”

 

“Ha!” Umi’s brief bark of a laugh sounds out over the mic, but she probably gives even fewer fucks than Reyes and the other spectators. Her muddy-green eyes don’t tick away from the magazine and another page gets turned. The iffy light of the arena glints off Umi’s stubbly head. “Somethin’ I can do ya for, Reyes?”

 

“Oh, Umi . . . _you_ can do me for free,” Reyes says, cranking up the charm super-high, because he feels like it and because to Umi, it’s all the same.

 

Now, she snorts, still not looking up from her current centerfold. “You couldn’t handle me, Vidal. I’m rough on my boys. And my girls. And I hear tell you like it kinda sweet and . . . romantic.” Those muddy eyes, amused and mocking, finally flick up to Reyes and he shrugs, neither confirming nor denying. Umi’s bullshit-o-meter is pretty sensitive and he’d rather not piss her off by lying or give her ammunition by being honest.

 

“Now, Umi, you know better than to pay attention to scurrilous gossip!”

 

One bushy, dark brow quirks up. “Uh-huh. Terrible stuff, that scurrilous gossip.” She snorts again. “Seriously, though, what’s up? I gotta match to run commentary on, y’know.”

 

Reyes glances obliquely at the skin-mag, then rolls his eyes. “Well, then, let me save you some suspense. Liam goes down in the second round. Possibly the third, but likely the second.”

 

Umi winks. “No shit, Nostradamus. Still, though, gotta call out the less boring bits, should one actually— _WHOA! THE KID’S A MANGLAAAAAAH!_ ” she turns to crow into the mic, still without looking into the arena. Then she huffs and turns a page, her eyes widening a bit as she eyes the redhead on display. “God, I _love_ _it_ when the carpet matches the drapes. It’s, like, symmetry, or some shit.”

 

Reyes chuckles. “Umi, you’re a true philosopher.”

 

“Just like it says on my diploma from Oxford,” she replies dryly. “Now, what’s up?”

 

“New kid on the scene. Possibly goes by _Ryder_. He up, tonight?”

 

“Yep,” Umi says, popping the “P” and without checking the meticulous register she keeps at her elbow. “Next match, actually. He’s up against whoever takes _this_ match.”

 

“So, he’ll be fighting Jaal, then,” Reyes murmurs. Umi shrugs, indifferent and uninterested. Then frowns and looks up.

 

“Why? You scoutin’ for Sloane? Didn’t realize she was lookin’ for fresh-meat.”

 

Reyes doesn’t even get a chance to demur in a way that wouldn’t answer Umi’s question before the veteran fighter smirks knowingly. “Ah,” she says, nodding, and slouching back in her folding chair and crossing her cargo-clad legs. “It’s like _that_ , is it?”

 

“Why, Umi, I don’t have _any_ idea what—”

 

“Yuh-huh. Whatever you say, Ell-Tee,” Umi says sarcastically, but crisply salutes Reyes before turning back to her skin-mag. “Kid’s trouble. And a fuckin’ quagmire. But that’s your type and your life, so . . . have at, old bean. And report back if you crack that nut, huh? I want _deets_. I’ll bet all that attitude and contempt for his inferiors looks _real_ good on its knees, with a hand on its throat and a cock in its mouth.”

 

Reyes rolls his eyes. “A philosopher _and_ a poet, Umi,” he drawls as he turns away from the creaky, rickety DJ booth.

 

“I just keep it real, Reyes—ugh, the only thing faker than her big, fake _tits_ is her lame, stupid O-face! Fuckin’ _amateurs_ and their fuckin’— _AND THE KID GOES DOWN! WHUH-HUH-HOA!_ ”

 

Rolling his eyes again, as the bell is rung frantically by Umi, Reyes makes his way back to his spot in the crowd. It hasn’t been taken—no one, not even _these_ desperate, bloodthirsty bruisers, takes what belongs to Reyes Vidal—and he skirts the ring. He distractedly eyes Liam’s fallen, limp form and Jaal’s solemn worry for the other fighter, as he does. By the time Reyes has resumed his place among the laughing, jabbering, drunken crowd, Liam is being helped out of the ring by some flunky and by a clearly concerned Jaal. Between them, the English kid’s barely conscious, head lolling, blood dripping thick and slow from his nose and mouth. He’s gargling out something that’s too British and too mush-mouthed for Reyes to make out, even if he cared to.

 

“Yes, my friend. We will get you many sleeves of biscuits. All the biscuits you can eat,” Jaal promises as the trio hobbles painstakingly past Reyes, toward Jaal’s prep-room. His low voice is very reassuring, with a faint accent. His midnight-skin shines with sweat and his long dreads—which are tied-up on his head to a fare-thee-well—are also dripping. “By _biscuits_ , you _do_ mean _cookies_ , yes? Do you like _Oreos_ , by chance?”

 

Reyes smirks and shakes his head as they pass out of earshot, just before Liam can mush out an answer either way. If Jaal has a style, other than grave, ponderous, and businesslike fighting, it’s that concern for most of his match-up partners. For him, the fight is _never_ personal, and Reyes marvels at that, even as he doesn’t know what to make of it, or of Jaal.

 

The crowd breaks up a little, after that, as some people migrate out to the bar for more drinks, or circulate and mingle. The next round isn’t for at least fifteen minutes, giving the champion a chance to rest, hydrate, and get back in the Zone for his next fight.

 

Reyes, not moving from his spot, staring absently at a small puddle of Liam’s blood near the edge of the ring, hums thoughtfully.

 

Remembering the ease with which Ryder had taken care of Axel/Aksul—Jaal’s direst competition, and the only fighter for whom Jaal’s fight _may just_ be personal—Reyes doubts that fifteen _days_ would put Jaal deep enough in the Zone to take down _Ryder_.

 

#

 

Reyes is, of course, correct.

 

From the moment Ryder slouches into the room and through the quickly-parting crowd—Reyes doesn’t need to look up to _see_ him arrive . . . he can _feel_ the kid’s presence in his gut and his blood—until he steps into the ring, directly across from Reyes, Reyes knows that _tonight_ isn’t the night Ryder will meet his match.

 

Those flat, amber eyes slide unseeingly over the crowd before him, his affect almost idiotic in its utter blankness. But Reyes has seen the chink in _that_ armor. Has seen glimpses of the Ryder _behind_ the affect, and knows the younger man is marking and weighing _everything_.

 

Even—if the flicker-flash in those eyes is anything to go by— _Reyes_.

 

Reyes offers Ryder a nod and his best smirk, in lieu of a toast. That gaze, with nary a pause, slides right over him, over the rest of the crowd, then drops to his filthy boots. Reyes expects nothing else, really. Everyone has a game-face, and Ryder’s is near-flawless . . . thus, tougher to maintain than most, no doubt.

 

Jaal steps into the ring with a nod and a rumbling, pleasant: “Hello.”

 

Ryder . . . frowns? Something that’s nearly an expression. Then he snorts and scratches his bare, broad, mostly hairless chest. Runs a hand over his hair, which looks relatively clean, tonight. Relatively.

 

Umi’s announcing is brief and to-the-point in a way that means she’s actually interested in the outcome of a match. In seconds, it seems, she’s ringing the bell, and the fight is engaged.

 

Jaal doesn’t dance, like Axel/Aksul. He prowls. Slowly, with great consideration, sizing up Ryder as if unsure what to make of him. Though not _especially_ fast, Jaal is almost prescient when it comes to knowing where his opponents will be next. Normally. In his own way, he is a reader of people, like Reyes. But, also like Reyes, he’s finding it tough to get a reliable read on Ryder. Because of that he’s hesitant, it becomes clear, to strike.

 

In this, he’s smarter than Axel/Aksul. Not that that will avail him much, in the end.

 

Ryder, for his part, merely stands and all but drools down at the floor, his coarse, semi-clean black hair obscuring the harsh lines of his face. So, it is that Reyes can’t be _certain_ that the kid’s mouth tics. Left corner, neither up nor down—smile nor frown—just to the side. Almost as if the kid is _nervous_ . . . or at least unsure about something.

 

Finally, after even the crowd’s gone quiet with the suspense, Jaal—who is _definitely_ frowning—makes his move. It’s a powerhouse blow, meant for Ryder’s mid-section, like Axel/Aksul had done. Only at the last second, as Ryder does his magic dance out of the way, Jaal is _also_ moving, bringing his other arm up in a haymaker that’s not quite as fast. But then, it doesn’t need to be. All it needs to be is _right where Ryder’s going to be_ , and that, it certainly is.

 

Reyes can see the moment Ryder realizes his mistake—the moment just before Jaal’s fist impacts that formerly impassive face. He can see Ryder’s eyes narrow with stoic acceptance and a flicker of surprised _respect_ before, with a meaty crack, his head rocks back. There’s a fine spray of blood and Ryder all but twirls into the stagger that should fell him. _Pirouettes_ , like Barishnikov in his heyday. He pivots on his heel—spins on it, and into a haymaker of his own. Ryder’s fist hits hard, _not_ in the spot where Jaal’s serene, dark face _is_ , but in the spot where Jaal’s serene, dark face is _going to be_.

 

A moment later, the sturdy man is staggering backwards. Forwards. Then back, again, swaying dazedly.

 

Ryder ducks an instinctive, wild blow from Jaal that’s rather heavily telegraphed, and with another spin, delivers a sharp uppercut that’s just powerful enough to finish the job without breaking Jaal’s jaw.

 

The man goes down as ponderously as he fights, sinking to his knees, as if in genuflection . . . then slithering into an unconscious sprawl on his back.

 

Ryder, breathing just a bit fast, stares down at his opponent for long moments, his face all keen, cruel angles and wide, raging eyes. But that rage is, this time, leavened with that flicker of respect. And perhaps something that might be . . . regret.

 

Whatever it is, Ryder turns and steps out of the ring before Reyes can parse it. He hitches up his saggy, dirty jeans and wipes at the thin rill of blood leaking from his nose—snorts and spits more of the same, and the people at the edge of the crowd move away from the bloody loogie _and_ Ryder—stalking off toward the small prep-room he’d used last time. Gone is the slouch Reyes has gotten used to seeing. In its place is a straight, calm, powerful strut that’s as graceful as Ryder’s fighting.

 

This time, Reyes doesn’t skirt the ring, but steps into it. Crosses it, stepping over a groaning, sluggishly stirring Jaal, and out the other side. He follows in Ryder’s wake, through the part in the excited, gabbling crowd.

 

At the back of the room, Reyes doesn’t hesitate to open the door between him and Ryder. He expects to find the young fighter facing the wall and peeling bloody tape off his hands, like last time.

 

So, it’s a surprise of the most jarring kind, when Reyes finds himself slammed against the door he’s just come through, his breath whooshing out of him in a hard gust as Ryder’s dense, damp body pins it. Angry, amber eyes glare up into Reyes’s own and he notes, with almost academic despair, that Ryder’s drawing his big, left, mangler-fist back and back. And _back_.

 

 _Reaching for power from further than the_ shoulder, Reyes notes with grim resignation. _From the center of the_ Earth _, maybe._ _He’s going to kill me, whether he means to, or not_.

 

Then that fist is driving towards Reyes’s face like a copper-colored pile-driver.

 

TBC


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryder’s in control. That’s the way it is and the way it has to be . . . Reyes isn’t buying into that, however.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Violence and rough sex.

 

Before Reyes even feels the first tickle of fear that _should_ come with his impending and untimely doom, the copper-blur that is Ryder’s fist is partially splintering the wood of the door barely an inch away from Reyes’s right cheek.

 

And speaking of just an inch away from Reyes’s face, Ryder is . . . nose-to-nose with Reyes, now, his eyes wide and angry and horrified. A universe, unto themselves.

 

“Are you fucking _nuts_?” he demands, his breath hot and harsh on Reyes’s face, his normally smooth tenor cracking, and his fist still clenched and jammed against the door. Any other person would be rolling on the floor, clutching their shattered hand and sobbing. But Ryder seems more . . . irate and high-strung, than in any sort of pain. “Do you wanna _die_ , tonight? Is that it?”

 

Reyes doesn’t even realize time has passed between them—time during which he’s apparently been holding his breath, because the world begins to dim alarmingly, but for Ryder. His eyes seem to be lit from within, flashing almost green and the very air around him almost seems to . . . shimmer. Like a faint, crackling blue aura. . . .

 

 _Danger-Danger-Danger!_ Reyes’s instinct shrills, all but running in circles and gibbering in fear that’s more than a little arousal, at heart and around the edges. He gasps in a breath that smells and tastes like Ryder, like electrified air, like ozone. That aura dims away to nothing, the flare in Ryder’s eyes fading to what might be tears. Reyes lets out his gasped-in breath in one relieved huff, his mouth working to form an answer to Ryder’s question. But the other growls and draws his fist back again—not far—and punches the door in the same spot, to more splintering sounds. His angry eyes seem more a baleful yellow, than the strange, green tint of mere moments ago. The air around him still crackles with electricity, though. Or . . . _some_ force.

 

Reyes absently wonders what it says about him that he hasn’t even flinched since Ryder nearly caved his skull in with a single blow . . . wonders if that makes them both less than human in similar—even complimentary ways.

 

It’s a whimsical bit of fancy, of the sort that Reyes has rarely entertained.

 

“Fuck!” Ryder rages as the silence between them spins out once more. Then he whirls away from Reyes and paces toward the table with the gauze and such. He grabs a pile of faded black from next to his hand-me-down army jacket and shakes it out as if he’s about to put it on. His gestures are choppy and, for once, graceless.

 

Reyes watches this all with wide eyes and an unaccustomed gape. Fights to breathe as he watches Ryder struggle to right the sleeve of his t-shirt. And struggle. And, really, _struggle_. For once, Ryder finally accepts defeat. With another growl, he lets go of the shirt and puts a cracking dent in the aging plaster of the wall behind the table. Then another. And another.

 

Then a fourth that makes plaster-dust settle on the table in a pathetic, gray rain.

 

And all in the space it takes for the shirt to flutter to floor.

 

In the silence that follows—silent, but for Ryder’s heavy breathing and the rabbit-fast thud of Reyes’s heart in his ears—Reyes clears his throat and tries to smirk. Fails, but it doesn’t matter, since Ryder’s glaring down at his jacket, his deadly hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

 

“That, ah, was some match-up,” Reyes finally says. It’s a seemingly inoffensive truth that costs him nothing.

 

Ryder twitches all over. Not quite a shudder. “It was what it was.”

 

“Modesty is such a refreshing trait in one so young and talented.”

 

No response to this. Reyes pushes himself away from the door, lets his boot scuff the floor so that Ryder knows he’s moved. Moving. Chuckles as he approaches the tense fighter and, once within touching distance, pauses. Ryder doesn’t smell good, but he certainly smells _better_ than he had a fortnight ago. And this close, the scars on his sweaty back look like they were done with a scalpel, rather than a razor.

 

Reyes wants to reach out and place his hand on Ryder’s back—feel the heat and hardness of muscle and bone, feel the throb and hum of the other’s life under his palm—but instead, he bends down and snags the fallen shirt. It reeks of old sweat and metal. The logo on the front is so faded, Reyes can’t even make it out.

 

He reaches past Ryder slowly, noting the way the fighter tenses further, his fists clenching, and drops the grungy shirt on the table next to the army jacket. On its way back to his side, Reyes’s hand decides, quite without his input, to settle tentatively on Ryder’s taut waist. He expects immediate tension and the telegraphing of imminent violence. Expects Ryder to, at best, pull away, and at worst to make good on the rage that’s still simmering just under his sweaty skin.

 

What he _doesn’t_ expect is what he gets: Ryder shudders and groans, the tension _leaving_ his body in a single, soughing rush as he leans just as tentatively into Reyes’s touch. He twitches and shivers anxiously as Reyes instinctively slides his hand in and over his six-pack, then down, slightly, to the cut and defined V where those dirty jeans have slipped as low as the very edges of decency.

 

“Ryder,” Reyes murmurs, leaning closer. Not close enough that he’s touching Ryder’s back, but close enough that his breath gusts warm and humid on the fighter’s ear and cheek. Ryder shivers again, a soft, almost pained moan escaping him with all the earmarks of a hard fight.

 

“He . . . got a family?” His voice is still creaky, but not quite as bad. Not quite smooth, either, though.

 

It takes Reyes a moment to follow Ryder’s gist, but then he snorts. “Jaal? Probably. Probably a _large_ one, considering the birth rates in the Kadara Projects.”

 

Ryder digests that in silence that’s heavy with something. Angst? Guilt? Reyes doesn’t know. He’s rarely bedeviled by either feeling and isn’t adept at making such distinctions.

 

“He’ll be fine, Ryder.”

 

“He almost wasn’t.”

 

“ _Almost_ doesn’t count for shit in this world,” Reyes says, flat and dismissive, his thumb stroking the still-twitching muscles of Ryder’s abs. Even that simple touch makes heat curl seemingly from Reyes’s toes, to spread and pool throughout his body. “But I doubt I have to tell _you_ that.”

 

Ryder makes another pained sound. “I almost lost control. That’s not good. Next time . . . next time. . . .” he shudders again, weary and whipped like an old mule. “I got complacent. He got past my defenses—scored a hit. And I got _mad_ and nearly. . . .”

 

“But you _didn’t_. The _only_ thing that counts for anything in the ring is what you _do_. Not what you _could’ve_ _done_.” Reyes leans in closer, bowing his head till Ryder’s hair brushes his nose, and not stopping until his chin is resting on Ryder’s hard shoulder. “Jaal will be fine, Ryder. And he certainly won’t hold your win against you. He’s actually a pretty nice guy.”

 

Ryder snorts. “‘Sat supposed to make me feel _better_ about almost killing him?”

 

Chuckling again, Reyes moves his body closer to Ryder’s, until the other man’s heat breaks him out in a light sweat. He’s hard—has been since . . . who knows when? At least since Ryder nearly shattered his face—but doesn’t quite dare to broadcast that fact to Ryder.

 

“You have more self-control—more of a rein on yourself than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Reyes admits, shivering himself. Impressed and letting it tell in his tone. Ryder turns his head slightly toward Reyes. He doesn’t have even a shadow of stubble, and his skin is very smooth-looking.

 

“I have no self-control, whatsoever,” the younger man says lowly, sighing. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

 

And Reyes knows that by _here_ , Ryder means more than just in the prep-room of an underground fight club, getting low-key felt-up by a relatively petty criminal. He smirks.

 

“Then, I must say I laud your so-called _lack_ of control. If you had a dram more—or common sense, too, it must be said—we’d never have met.”

 

Ryder snorts again, his face turning toward Reyes’s a bit more. His large, rough right hand settles on Reyes’s, where it rests just below his abdomen . . . poised to drop lower. For a few moments, Reyes is convinced that Ryder’s going to _push it lower_.

 

It wouldn’t take much to make those tired, dirty jeans drop. And Reyes is very practiced at the single-handed undoing of flies.

 

But then, Ryder’s body tenses again, his head hanging and face obscured by the curtain of his hair.

 

“I . . . I _need_ to maintain control,” he says, his voice cracking again, as his hand drops reluctantly, regretfully away from Reyes’s. “Until this’s over, I can’t lose focus and I can’t be distracted. If I lose control . . . I lose _everything_.”

 

Reyes hums, his hand sliding not down, but up, lingering just under Ryder’s ribs. He can feel the beat of the fighter’s heart, angry and fast and _strong_ despite, Reyes suddenly knows, being significantly broken for a very _long_ time.

 

“Why, Ryder,” he teases shakily, stepping over his own pang of empathy, and his deep and profound revelation—his keen _understanding_ of the man before him, “are you insinuating that I’m . . . _distracting_ to you?”

 

A desperate bark of a laugh, and Ryder is moving away from Reyes and his hand . . . to the left, and the ugly, taped-up chair at the end of the table. He drops into that chair like a stone into a pond, quickly hunching forward with elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands.

 

But he’s not quick enough that Reyes misses a startling and heartening fact. One that makes him drift closer to the younger man and place a gentle hand on damp, dark hair. Ryder doesn’t quite lean into his touch, but certainly doesn’t turn away: another heartening thing.

 

“Self-denial is the greatest distraction there is. It’s like telling yourself not to look down when you’re up on some high place. All you’re good for, once you start telling yourself _not_ to look down, is _looking down_. And, perhaps, falling.” Reyes shrugs, his smile turning rueful. “You’re digging your own grave by denying yourself what you want, Ryder. What you _need_.”

 

“Oh, really?” Ryder asks with a tired laugh, and without looking up from his hands. He doesn’t ask the most _obvious_ follow-up question, and Reyes chuckles again, obscurely proud of and vaguely endeared to this broken pile of edges masquerading as a man. “So, what’re you suggesting, Mr. Vidal?”

 

Letting the silence speak for him for a minute earns him Ryder’s wary gaze. For the first time, those at turns flat, angry, hard, intelligent, empty eyes are _young_. Uncertain. Haunted, too. Desperately afraid for _everyone_ but himself. Desperately afraid of no one, _but_ himself.

 

Reyes’s brow furrows, his hand sliding down to cup Ryder’s strangely vulnerable face. “I’m suggesting,” he murmurs, a slow tease that’s as hungry as it is candid, “that you need to relinquish that iron-control of yours, for a little while. Relieve some of the stress you’re carrying before you really _do_ kill someone, intentionally or not.”

 

“And h-how do you suggest I do _that_? Yoga? Pilates? Aroma therapy? Talking about my feelings?” Ryder’s scoffing and scowling by the end of what, from him, is practically a rant. Reyes’s slight frown turns into a smirk.

 

“Not exactly,” he says, stepping closer—close enough that Ryder automatically sits back in the chair, equally furious and defiant, and no longer hiding the hard-on Reyes had spotted as he sat. It tents out the front of his dirty jeans, as furious and defiant as everything else about Ryder. “I’m an advocate of a more . . . primal sort of stress-relief.”

 

Ryder’s eyes flicker again as Reyes gestures down at himself, that intense gaze travelling almost palpably down Reyes’s long, lean body—the untucked, button-down, charcoal-colored shirt that tapers very flatteringly to matching trousers . . . the front of which is distended noticeably with Reyes’s own hard-on.

 

Ryder’s eyes narrow as they linger at groin-level and he unconsciously licks his lips. Reyes’s smirk deepens and he spreads his hands as if to say: _See? Similar problems with similar solutions_.

 

Snorting, Ryder’s eyes drift back up Reyes’s body and meet his gaze. His expression is both hungry and sneering, sullen and fearless. He slides one big hand up his thigh and cups his crotch lightly, before giving it a teasing tug that makes his amber eyes darken.

 

“Alright. Teeth are fine,” he says confidently, his tenor back to its normal firmness and pleasant indifference. “But I’m not lookin’ to get circumcised tonight, so . . . go easy.”

 

Reyes huffs out a small laugh, placing his hand on his stomach for a moment, before single-handedly undoing the button of his fly. Ryder watches this—watches Reyes unzip, and free his cock from his boxers and trousers with a minimum of fuss—with wide eyes, while licking his lips again. Now, Reyes is _certain_ it’s unconscious.

 

“What a coincidence,” he says warmly. “ _I_ like teeth, _too_. In moderation,” he adds, stroking himself slowly and putting on a show that even Ryder can’t hide his appreciation of, if the accelerated squeezing of his own erection and the bitten off “fuck” is anything to go by. Reyes’s smirk is completely out of hand, now, but he doesn’t care. Neither, he suspects, does Ryder, because when Reyes’s next words are a rough, but almost affectionate: “Get on your knees,” Ryder doesn’t instantly rearrange Reyes’s . . . everything.

 

Instead, his eyes flicker—fury-defiance-want-uncertainty—before dropping to Reyes’s hand and cock again.

 

Not long after that, Ryder, like his eyes, is dropping. Sliding out of the chair, grunting as his knees hit the cement floor with a soft thump, deadly hands still and obedient on his thighs, just like his gaze.

 

Reyes feels a strangely gentle, but predatory glee. A vicious fondness that makes him chuckle again, as confident as if he’d never doubted either of them. He cups Ryder’s face in his free hand.

 

“Eyes on me, Ryder,” he commands almost tenderly, his breath catching for a moment when those amber eyes meet his own, intent and intense and waiting. _Wanting_. Reyes’s smirk becomes a genuine smile as he brushes his thumb across Ryder’s lower lip.

 

“It’s been a while,” Ryder mumbles, his tongue teasing the pad of Reyes’s thumb. It’s not quite an apology . . . more like partial disclosure. Reyes’s brows lift a little, amused and wry.

 

“That’s . . . really not a problem. I don’t need or want fancy technique or tricks. Just this mouth.” He hums, letting his hand drift down to rest lightly, then less so over Ryder’s trip-hammering pulse, stroking with the promise of cheerfully-applied pressure and benevolently-bestowed cruelty. “ _And_ this throat.”

 

Ryder blinks. Swallows. Licks his lips a third time, before parting them, his eyelids fluttering slightly, but not closing. The heat in that mesmerizing amber stare isn’t about anger, now. Well . . . not _entirely_.

 

Reyes holds Ryder’s passively challenging gaze as, with a rough, slow stroke, he guides himself forward. His thumb presses ponderously on Ryder’s pulse . . . fingertips digging ever-so-lightly into Ryder’s wind-pipe.

 

He’s not imagining the dilation of Ryder’s inky, abyss-dark pupils. That, too, is . . . heartening.

 

“Trust me?” he rumbles, only half-joking. Ryder snorts cool and sarcastic on Reyes’s cock, before running the tip of his tongue across the slit without further preamble. He closes his lips around the head—just a _hint_ of teeth—without breaking their locked gazes.

 

A dry, amused _nope_ hangs in the air between them, silent and unsounded, for long moments while Ryder works the head of Reyes’s cock with flattering gusto.

 

Fair enough, then.

 

Reyes huffs a delighted, groaning chuckle and grins down at Ryder, nearly taken over by that startling and possessive fondness once more—and an apocalyptic flush of scalding desire and atomic-level _rightness_ —as he murmurs: “ _Smart man_.”

 

TBC


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coitus completus. And the . . . afterglow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Violence and rough sex.

 

To Reyes’s supreme delight, Ryder takes cock like he takes a match . . . takes it like he was born for nothing else but being on his knees, with his mouth and throat being stretched.

 

The sounds he makes as he teases Reyes—professional as a porn-star—are absolutely _delicious_. But they’re _nothing_ compared to the sounds he makes when Reyes tightens his hand and pushes himself further into that wet, warm mouth. Ryder’s eyes flutter open wider, tears gathering even as his blown-wide pupils dilate more. The amber of his eyes is stormy and lowering—almost threatening. Though that threat is a thick veneer . . . a layer of leaves over the quicksand bog of Ryder’s need, desperation, and achingly _earnest_ submission.

 

When the tip of Reyes’s cock hits the back of Ryder’s throat, he can feel the soft spasm and clench, the not-quite-gag that Ryder clearly has no patience for in his desire and determination to take all of what Reyes has to give.

 

The sounds he makes as he does so, are even more arousing than the others. Now that someone else is in complete control, Ryder’s mangler-hands are utterly still on his thighs, quiescent and calm, not so much as twitching. He’s making muffled moans high in his chest or low in his throat, that rumble so sweetly around Reyes as he pushes himself deeper and deeper, testing Ryder’s desire and resolve.

 

When Reyes comes to a stop with a soft, approving grunt, some careful time later, Ryder’s saliva-slicked lips and tear-wet face are pressed against his skin and pubic hair, his back arched and bowed in a gorgeously acquiescent curve. His hands are still in their place, neither impatient nor tensed, and those amber eyes, but for the occasional blink to clear away tears, have never left Reyes’s. They shine with anticipation and challenge.

 

Reyes smirks, his hand tight and possessive— _very_ possessive . . . but not _too_ tight—on Ryder’s throat. He can feel himself behind the throb of pulse and the shudder of each reactive swallow Ryder makes.

 

“It might be,” Reyes huffs out, stroking the hard outline of his own cock soothingly, gently with his thumb. The thin barriers of flesh and cartilage between thumb and cock are so fragile and responsive. So hot and smooth. Ryder’s moans, however, are rough, and becoming impatient. “It might be that you’re wasted in the ring, Ryder.”

 

That’s good for a slow blink that Reyes can’t read and a sound that nearly makes him shove forward for a few more centimeters while coming harder than he ever has.

 

But he doesn’t. Instead he steels himself, then pulls out slowly—more for his own stamina, than for Ryder’s comfort—and thrusts back in and down. Faster than the first time and harder. Ryder snorts softly, a flicker in his eyes that Reyes takes to mean: _Is that all ya got?_

 

Reyes chuckles, though his teeth are clenched tight and his free hand biting into his own thigh in a bid for his customary control and sangfroid. “We’re going to be friends, you and I,” he informs Ryder breathlessly, and receives another snort and a pointed swallow that forces a groan from his throat markedly harder than he’d forced his cock down Ryder’s.

 

 _That_ simply would not do.

 

Instead of continuing to dig his fingers into his thigh, he digs his hand into Ryder’s thick, slightly greasy hair and clenches: hard. Tight. Warning. Rather than pulling out of Ryder’s slack, willing mouth, he pulls Ryder’s shaggy, stubborn head off his cock. When the tip rests on Ryder’s swollen, spit-and-precome-shiny lower lip and Ryder’s gasping in harsh, deep breaths through his nose—still holding Reyes’s gaze, like he’s got something to prove—Reyes tsks, cranking his smirk up into a stern and paternal smile.

 

“I’ve got plenty for _you_ , Ryder, don’t worry on that count. But you’ll get it in _my time_. When _I_ say. Not a moment before.” Ryder blinks up at Reyes, his eyes gone unreadable again, but he’s licking his lips as if chasing down Reyes’s taste on them and still listing forward like a drunk toward the last swallow of rotgut. “Are we clear on the protocol for this . . . exchange?”

 

Ryder’s eyes narrow, defiant and disdainful— _goading_ , and Reyes, willing to play along for the time being, gives Ryder what he’s asking for. He grips the fighter’s throat tighter and harder very suddenly. Ryder makes a startled squawk and as soon as his mouth opens, Reyes shoves himself back in—with a half-second pause to be certain Ryder isn’t a biter by reflex—and back down Ryder’s throat.

 

This time, Ryder _does_ gag, his trachea convulsing and eyes closing. Reyes tsks again, not unkindly.

 

“ _You_ wanted this, Ryder. You _need_ it. So, be a good boy and _take it like a man_.” Reyes sounds winded and ridiculous, even to his own ears. But whatever he’s saying and however he’s saying it, it clearly works for Ryder, because he slowly, but surely brings his body under his control. It isn’t long before he’s opening his reddened, intent eyes and locking gazes with Reyes again. A half-mast flutter of surprisingly long lashes, and Reyes takes that as a sign that Ryder’s ready, willing, and able to _own_ his nature . . . his need to be possessed and controlled.

 

To both give himself and be taken.

 

After that, time passes in a haze of self-restraint and the very denial—though only temporary—against which he’d warned Ryder. He steadily, repeatedly drives himself down the younger man’s now-relaxed throat, increasing his pace and intensity seemingly on random whims, but based on what Ryder seems ready for. What he seems _hungry_ for.

 

By the time Reyes reaches his own point of no return—the point where their gazes finally break, due to Reyes closing his eyes as a low, almost angry groan rumbles up from his chest—he’s very nearly scalped Ryder. His hand is so tight in the other’s wild, coarse hair, that he knows he’ll be feeling the ache in his fingers for the next day at least. Ryder whimpers, soft and hopeful and almost sweetly . . . and Reyes’s groan turns into a grunt as his eyes fly open and he pulls out of Ryder’s throat and mouth. Pulls Ryder off his cock, just before grabbing it and just in time to finish on Ryder’s flushed, sweaty face.

 

Only _then_ do _Ryder’s_ eyes close—wisely, because Reyes is coming hard, wild, and a lot—but with an air not of avoiding the very unpleasant burn of an eyeful of come. No, Ryder’s eyes close with _relief_ . . . anticipation and relief.

 

In the moments between the first spatters hitting Ryder’s stunningly beatific face and Reyes’s eyes once more shutting tight—as his release burns out of him at lightspeed and for an eternity—he knows only three things for certain:

 

_He’s gorgeous . . . the most beautiful thing I’ll ever see. . . ._

_And he’s_ mine _, now._

 

Then, even that soul-deep knowledge is erased by pleasure like a supernova, consuming everything in its path, before collapsing in on itself to become the ultimate darkness . . . from which not even thought escapes.

 

#

 

When Reyes opens his eyes sometime later, he’s listing forward, half-leaning on Ryder—one hand on the other man’s broad shoulder—soaked in sweat and shivering in the chill because of that. His breathing is deep and erratic, his body wired and alive, as per usual after a good orgasm . . . but even for an _orgasm_ , this has been. . . .

 

“Ryder,” he exhales, pushing himself up using the still kneeling fighter as leverage. He’s loath to let go of that sturdy, steady shoulder completely until he’s more certain of his shaking and tingling legs.

 

Ryder, for his part, merely kneels, sitting on his heels, head bowed, hands right where Reyes remembers them being. He’s so stoic and still, he could be the statue of supplicants-past.

 

Reyes frowns and squeezes Ryder’s shoulder. The younger man still doesn’t look up, his face obscured by his disheveled hair. For once, Reyes doesn’t know what to say. For at least several minutes, he’s utterly speechless beyond wanting to say Ryder’s name, just to have it in his mouth.

 

And then, as aftershocks become afterglow, and Reyes can _think_ again, he knows _exactly_ what to say. Knows exactly what comes next.

 

“You did very well, Ryder,” he purrs, rough and hoarse in a way that means he may have shouted, at some point, while coming. He twines his fingers in Ryder’s hair again and tugs—but gently, this time. That’s all it takes for Ryder to turn his face up.

 

Under the glaze of Reyes’s come, Ryder’s face is still stunning and beatific, eyes closed as he hovers at the cusp of what was clearly a moment of epiphany for him. One that he’s still lingering at and savoring.

 

Reyes finds himself smiling, and noting an unfamiliar warmth in his chest.

 

“Eyes on me, Ryder. Remember?” he prods gently, and Ryder shivers. His lids and lashes flutter, and he licks his lips, swiping with relish at the come thereon. Reyes feels the small action like a gut-punch.

 

“Can’t,” Ryder grunts, small, stiff, and miserable. His voice is a wrecked husk.

 

Surprised at this disobedience, but more curious and worried, than displeased, Reyes grabs Ryder’s stinky t-shirt from the table, straightens, and lets go of Ryder’s shoulder to tilt his face up a bit more.

 

When he’s wiped his come from on and around Ryder’s closed eyes, then off his cheeks, Reyes strokes the cleared areas with his thumb. Ryder shivers so deep, it’s practically a shudder, and whines just below Reyes’s range of hearing.

 

“There,” he whispers, tossing the t-shirt back at the table so he can cup Ryder’s mostly-clean face in both hands. “Is that better?”

 

Another shudder, and a shrug as Ryder licks at his lips again. Reyes feels that gut-punch, along with a slow, low, dirty tingle that’s faint, but there. It won’t be long before he’s ready to go again. And he doesn’t mean for the _next time_ to happen in this prep-room. But first. . . .

 

“On your feet, Ryder.” Reyes lets go of Ryder’s face, and the other man obeys without hesitation. Though he’s oddly shaky and moving gingerly. When he’s standing before Reyes, yet still all but curled in on himself, Reyes sees and understands.

 

“You haven’t come,” he says without inflection, despite the sudden acceleration of his heartbeat and pulse. He could be announcing the time or the temperature. But for the fact that he’s running feather-light fingers down Ryder’s denim-covered cock, over the sizeable wet-spot, and up along his poked-out fly. Ryder makes a soft, near-whimper, listing toward Reyes just a little.

 

“You . . . didn’t say I could,” he mumbles, his face so red it’s visible even under that coppery-dark complexion.

 

Reyes fights the smile that wants to take his face, but allows his customary smirk to be a substitute.

 

“But I _did_ say you were to keep your eyes on me. I _told_ _you_ to open your eyes, Ryder.”

 

Now, Ryder looks _really_ miserable—even bites his lip hard enough to leave indentations.

 

“You either want me to look at you, or you want me not to come. Kinda can’t do both, at the moment. Sorry,” he grits out in gruff apology.

 

Now, Reyes doesn’t bother to deny the smile its place. It’s not like anyone’s looking, anyway.

 

He reaches out, and unbuttons the falling-off button then unzips the tired zipper of Ryder’s jeans. Ryder’s cock, _thick_ , average-length, and uncut, immediately pokes out, wet and even redder than his face. Pragmatist that he is, Reyes doesn’t normally find cocks beautiful or ugly . . . they simply are what they are. But Ryder’s cock is an unexpectedly eye-pleasing specimen. The word _perfect_ might just accurately describe it, in Reyes’s current, elevated mood.

 

Several firm, slow strokes later, Ryder’s shaking and broken out in a sweat again, his eyes moving frantically behind his lids, tears leaking out to roll down his anxious face. Reyes continues stroking with his right hand and cups Ryder’s cheek in his left.

 

“Such a good boy . . . so obedient and sincere,” he murmurs, and Ryder shivers again, under the simple, but honest statement. Reyes leans in to seal words with deed, and praise with reward. . . .

 

But it’s with a solemn acknowledgement of the gravity and importance of all that has happened and _will_ happen between them, that he hesitates for a moment.  Consciously accepts that for this short span _universes_ spin around and _destinies_ hinge on whatever is occurring between himself and this mysterious mangler-boy, this . . . underdog.

 

That moment comes and is gone in less than a heartbeat, leaving Reyes to finish closing the brief distance between them. He has no doubt Ryder can feel his nearness and even guess what’s about to happen. But the fighter still gasps and moans helplessly when Reyes’s lips press his own, chaste and sweet. And though it would be pure fancy to think that Ryder _also_ feels the amazing jolt of _rightness_ and inevitability in that kiss, Reyes entertains the notion for a few wistful seconds. “Now, _open your eyes_ , Ryder.”

 

Ryder licks his slightly parted lips and Reyes does the same to his own, which still tingle and throb from that simple kiss.

 

“Open your eyes,” he says again— _commands_ , in a voice as hard as Ryder still is in his hand, “and come for me.”

 

With a flare of his narrow nostrils and a flutter of thick, wet lashes, Ryder’s eyes open.

 

With a garbled gasp and groan, Ryder shoots hard, hot, and long all over Reyes’s hand and wrist and cuff.

 

With a triumphant and acquisitive smirk, Reyes claims Ryder’s mouth in a _real_ kiss, wet and wanton, deep and dirty, lingering and lascivious. It isn’t long before Ryder’s not even kissing back, anymore, but simply gasping again and letting Reyes plunder and ravage his mouth with teeth and tongue.

 

For his part, Reyes is chasing down the taste of himself, strong and bitter, in Ryder’s mouth. Is teasing more of that throbbing-electric-warmth feel that he’s never before felt from a kiss—usually, Reyes can take kissing or leave it, but with Ryder . . . it’s _definitely_ something worth savoring and doing _right_ —trying to take into himself every bit of Ryder’s need and pleasure and vulnerability.

 

He doesn’t realize he’s been backing them up until Ryder’s ass hits the table and he grunts into the kiss, once more returning it with helpless, but grateful ardor.

 

Reyes’s hand drops away from Ryder’s face and he breaks the kiss ruthlessly, trying to control his panting as he brings his other hand, dripping with come, up to Ryder’s face.

 

Hooded, heated amber eyes meet Reyes’s as Ryder leans forward slightly, giving Reyes’s hand several teasing kitten-licks before applying himself to his task with singular focus and naked enjoyment.

 

When he’s finished his cleaning—making _extravagant_ sucking sounds and without once breaking their stare—Reyes moves in for another kiss. It’s not long, but it’s thorough; he tastes Ryder like bitter and salt, iron and earth, and moans before he can stifle it.

 

Even in the midst of this kiss, with his own eyes closed, he can feel Ryder’s gaze on him, hot and hungry, but sated and calm, too. He doesn’t resist when Reyes presses him harder against the table. Nor does he resist when Reyes clamps down on his slim hips, possessive and hard.

 

“Let’s get out of here,” Reyes says, and this time, it’s at least part question.

 

“Mmwhaaah? Outta here?” Ryder mumbles, lazy and dazed, nudging Reyes’s nose with his own until Reyes chuckles and steals a kiss that’s more tease than tongue.

 

“Yes. _My place_ , Ryder. It’s not far.” And, after a moment of hesitation—during which he slides his arms around Ryder’s waist, pressing their damp, overheated bodies together with another sudden _zing_ of utter rightness and finality—Reyes completes his offer as casually as if it hasn’t been several years since he’s done anything like it. “You’re . . . welcome to stay the night.”

 

Ryder freezes in his arms and when Reyes opens his eyes, it’s to see Ryder’s gaze gone off into the distance over his left shoulder, flat and blank and unreadable. Though his brow is ever so slightly furrowed.

 

“Ryder,” Reyes begins, frowning and feeling as if the _terra firma_ under his feet has turned into a pit-trap with no warning and no recourse. All around them, universes and destinies come to a crashing halt that he can feel on a molecular level.

 

Ryder blinks once, slow and disinterested, his customary affect back in place so fast and so seamless, Reyes momentarily thinks he’d dreamed the past however long since he’d followed Ryder out of the arena. Searching that wall-like, thousand-yard stare nets him nothing but _more_ confusion and disorientation.

 

“I should go,” Ryder says, his voice as pleasant and impersonal as a flight attendant’s. Then, he’s pulling free of a stunned Reyes’s arms, grabbing his soiled, smelly shirt and old army jacket, and slouching toward the door while fumbling with his fly.

 

When Reyes’s discombobulation recedes enough to allow him to react, he turns just in time to see the door shut behind Ryder.

 

 _Well. So much for the afterglow_ , he thinks, sardonic and darkly amused . . . and certainly nothing else. Not bitter, not disappointed, not strangely— _keenly_ —lonely in the wake of so much time spent in Ryder’s orbit. In Ryder’s eyes.

 

No, Reyes Vidal is a simple man with simple wants, needs, and preferences. And while he may want Ryder, and prefer that the fighter had stayed and even followed him home . . . he’s far too jaded and evolved to feel anything like _need_ for another human being. Even one who’s an epic, verging on transcendent fuck.

 

And especially one he’s only had a single desperate, fumbling taste of and whose first name he doesn’t even _know_ . . . and likely never will.

 

In under a minute, Reyes is tucked away and zipped up, pulled together and smirking ironically. When he steps back out into the mostly empty arena, his game-face is welded on, amused and approachable, as always. He nods graciously at hails and greetings, but doesn’t encourage chit-chat. Not even once he bellies up to the bar, which is so busy that even Umi’s helping out the three bartenders, while scowling thunderously at patrons.

 

She takes one look at Reyes. Then another, her muddy eyes widening. Reyes holds her gaze and doesn’t allow himself to ponder what she might be reading off him. Finally, Umi shrugs and without a word, stops in the middle of making a mojito, and plonks a clean glass in front of Reyes and a full, unopened bottle of Mount Milgrom.

 

“Have at, Ell Tee,” she says, with her usual dry camaraderie, but without attempting to pry. Not that she’d have to. She, too, is, in her own way, as much of a people-reader as Jaal. As Reyes. So, he’s obscurely grateful when she goes back to the half-made mojito and lets him alone thereafter. As does everyone else at the bar.

 

He cracks the cap on the Milgrom and buckles down for a long and unprecedented black-out of a drunk.

 

With curious, wary looks—and the occasional confused double-take—even his own lackeys are reluctant to catch Reyes’s dark, grimly glittering eyes . . . let alone approach their normally laidback lieutenant.

 

Because whatever _else_ he is, Reyes Vidal is also—as ever—a man best not fucked with in certain moods. And this mood—this _night_ —is a shining example of that. The fact that it shows so _plainly_ , even to those who are at best marginally close to him, is a warning klaxon only the foolhardy ignore, and at their direct peril.

 

TBC


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even _Reyes Vidal_ has a day-job. Rather, an _evening_ -job. And he’s very, _very_ good at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Violence, implied murder, and implied coerced sex.

 

Ryder’s not at the next fight, nor the one after that.

 

Nor the one after _that_.

 

By the fifth consecutive missed fight, Reyes tells himself he’s stopped waiting. Stopped caring. He takes these assertions with more than one grain of salt, however. After all, he’s not used to lying to _himself_ , and is thus no good at it. Not remotely convincing, even to a self that's on the very threshold of a black-out.

 

He’s been mostly on that threshold, teetering to one side or the other, for the past week and a half. But it doesn’t interfere with his regular duties—no, he’s _not_ quite _that_ far gone up his own ass and down the drain with despair, that he’s even _close_ to throwing away all his hard and ruthless work, all the betrayals and cons, the lies and murders, irrevocably devastated lives . . . including his own . . . over some broken, beautiful, goddamned _kid_ —nor does it affect his professional relationships.

 

Well . . . not _much_.

 

Sloane gives him strange looks when he’s . . . momentarily distracted during the current daily rundown . . . the fourth that’s happened since Ryder’s last fight. Her cold, heterochromatic eyes are always measuring, always evaluating. Always weighing value against disposability. She looks at people—especially the ones she keeps close—and sees pros and cons, strengths and weakness, pluses and minuses. Things that make people worth something to her, for however long she needs them . . . and things that make them liabilities.

 

She has many, many enemies and not a single friend. She has no weakness to be used against her or exploited, no favorites, no family. There is no one she likes, per se, though she suffers more competent people further than others, and fools not at all. She has _a_ companion, of sorts . . . a woman she has probably enough leverage against to feel comfortable risking sleeping next to, but not _so_ much leverage that said woman might, feeling backed into a corner, do something precipitous while Sloane is taking said risk.

 

Like everyone with eyes and halfway decent taste, Sloane is, of course, intrigued by the sultry, exotic Keema Dohrgun—few aren’t—but Sloane doesn’t particularly care about her. That is, probably, Sloane’s _greatest_ strength. Not her ruthlessness or cleverness or keen instincts. It’s that she doesn’t care about anyone or anything but power—and its uses—for its own sake. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t destroy if it stood between her and whatever her taker-brain wanted. Nothing she wouldn’t step on and grind into the dust if it got in her way, be he lieutenant or her lover.

 

Sloane’s lieutenant is working _his own_ angles, with regards to his boss. He has _no_ doubts she suspects he is, and will dispose of him once she’s certain that plan can’t hurt her from beyond Reyes’s grave. Once she’s wrung from Reyes everything she thinks worth taking.

 

As for Sloane’s lover . . . Keema is one of a very few people Reyes finds both worth reading and almost impossible to pin down, beyond her basic mood. For all he knows, she does nothing but plot Sloane’s downfall. But whatever watches behind those luminous, serene eyes has left them all—Sloane, included—guessing and wondering if Keema Dohrgun is predator or—

 

“You even listenin’, Vidal, or should I repeat myself?”

 

Reyes blinks his red, stinging eyes—he hasn’t slept very well over the past ten nights, no matter how deep into his bottles he gets—and meets Sloane’s reptilian-cold gaze, repressing an instinctive shudder and kicking himself for letting his game-face slip.

 

It _never_ does to be less than alert and observant around an uber-predator as carefully self-constructed as Sloane Kelly. She may not be an especially adept reader of people, but she’s got an eerie instinct for weak-spots in even the toughest armor. The only reason Reyes has lasted so long in her employ—has been so _valuable_ to her—is that he is a man of _few_ weak-spots. At least, few that anyone, even Sloane, is in a position to exploit.

 

Reyes—carefully _not_ thinking of Ryder, and the way the younger man had gazed up at him with smoldering submission, while Reyes took _what_ he wanted, the way he _wanted_ _it_ . . . and _certainly_ not remembering the way Ryder had let himself be kissed after coming, until his affect had fallen completely away, leaving behind an unexpected purity and naked _sweetness_ —supposes that, in the end, it’s best that it stays that way.

 

Wanting someone is, after all, merely a . . . _quirk_. _Needing_ _them_ is . . . a weakness of the worst and most dangerous sort.

 

“I heard every word, of course,” he tells Sloane sincerely, honestly, weathering her amused—for the moment—disbelief. She’s sprawled in a graceless recline on her throne—she makes no bones about what it is and what it’s meant to represent—one leg bent with her boot on the edge of the seat, the other leg shot out in front of her. She’s wearing her usual kind of outfit: loose-fitting, well-made tracksuit bottoms and a pristine grey wife-beater under an incongruous leather vest. Her feet are shod in low-key boots that Reyes knows are _ridiculously_ expensive and steel-toed. Her hair, as always is kept close to her scalp in cornrows that look painfully tight.

 

Next to Sloane, perched on the arm of the throne radiating gentle amusement, Keema Dohrgun is smiling her usual enigmatic and knowing smile. Her large, dark, almond-shaped eyes—almond-shaped, but in a _different_ way than Ryder’s . . . lucent and serene and peaceful, unlike Ryder’s electric, _sturm und drang_ , amber maelstrom—are as unblinking and all-seeing as an ancient stone idol. Her smooth skin is the _color_ of almonds, too, and her long, heavy, dead-straight, blue-black hair hangs down her back in a four-a.m. fall.

 

She, too, is dressed in understated clothes: a cobalt-blue pencil skirt, matching blouse, and strappy, low black heels. But on her—showcasing such a generously-curved and voluptuous body—that innocuous, librarian-esque outfit is distractingly sensual and suggestive. Even Reyes feels her effortless magnetism like a laser-beam, through the haze and fug of his intoxication and depression.

 

But he knows better than to shit where he eats. And that includes gawking at the boss’s preferred piece of ass, no matter how . . . _casual_ Sloane’s preference.

 

Nonetheless, when Keema’s smile, wry and almost apologetic, widens under his already shifting stare, Reyes can’t help but return it with a slight nod of acknowledgement. She always puts him in mind of Ms. Moneypenny . . . except that Sloane is no M, nor is he, himself, Double-Oh-Seven.

 

Once the temptation to snort and chuckle is safely past, he’s marshalling all his scattered attention and focus, and aiming it toward his boss.

 

It’s unusually tough to keep meeting that cold-blooded, merciless gaze.

 

“Farrah Noskos is becoming something of a . . . problem,” Reyes says plainly, summing up Sloane’s already to-the-point statements on the matter, his usual charm put firmly away. Sloane’s immune to charm, as far as he knows, but if she thinks he’s attempting to manipulate her, she’ll likely have him killed no matter how valuable he still is. “Rather like a persistent rash, yes?”

 

Sloane’s eyes narrow, but she huffs and slouches back on her throne. “She’s got her little Roekkar-bastards movin’ in on my territory—makin’ inroads she _thinks_ I won’t challenge.” With another huff and a baleful flicker in her dead eyes, Sloane puts an absent, possessive hand on Keema’s knee, squeezing with brooding satisfaction. Keema’s smile doesn’t change one tic. “It’s time and past she was shown she’s got another think comin’.”

 

Reyes nods once, briskly, sighing on the inside and doing his best to ignore the burn of stomach acid that’s got nothing to feed on but stomach _lining_ and a probably unwise amount of Lagavullin for breakfast. He can read between _everyone’s_ lines, but especially lines as broad and drawn-in-crayon as Sloane’s. He stands easily, shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks because he knows if he doesn’t, they’ll fidget and shake and give him away more than his irritated eyes.

 

“I’ll hand-pick a team, and we’ll pay Ms. Noskos and her coterie a visit in the morning.”

 

“Make it this evening. I want this problem solved—and _confirmation_ that it’s solved—by midnight.”

 

Reyes’s brows lift fractionally, but otherwise, his expression remains impassive. In the back of his sobering brain, he’s already moving duties around, as well his increasing personal obsession with the fight club.

 

Ryder’s been M.I.A. for long enough that he’s probably moved on. To another district or another city. Somewhere, anywhere Reyes is _not_. Hanging around the arena and chatting up Umi—with embarrassingly _obvious_ intent to ferret-out who’s on the fight roster for the night—is getting old. And it’s not going to make _Ryder_ reappear as if by magic.

 

Reyes absently puts the final bit of his wanting game-face on: his customary smirk. Sloane smiles back, mirthless, and already bored and weighing . . . _always_ weighing. Aware that he’s been woolgathering far too much while Sloane’s focus is directly on him, Reyes is careful to meet her eyes no matter how laid-bare he suddenly feels under her undivided attention. He’s never had secrets from Sloane—not any that she’d _care_ _about_ , beyond his par-for-the-course ambitions to take away everything she’s built and remake it in his own image—and still doesn’t. So, his own irrational skittishness makes him impatient with himself.

 

He forces his mind away from the only thing it ever wants to dwell on, lately, and onto the unfortunate Ms. Noskos.

 

“You’ll have confirmation by ten,” Reyes promises, grim and confident, as he strides out of Sloane’s Spartan, dining-hall of an office. He can feel her calculating and predatory gaze—and Keema Dohrgun’s still and amused one—on his back as he goes, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a man with a license—if not the blood-red _desire_ —to kill.

 

#

 

At eight minutes after eleven, Reyes shuffles slowly, wearily into _Tartarus_.

 

He’s wearing a long, dark raincoat, under which is different— _indifferent_ —business-casual wear than he’d been wearing just two hours ago. _That_ outfit is so much ashes in the bottom of an anonymous furnace, having been rendered good for nothing but destruction. Or becoming a link in a potential chain of evidence, by dint of being rather soaked in the blood of Sloane’s enemies. Much like their wearer had been, after his delightful evening with the Roekkar boys and their raging, batshit leader.

 

Underneath the spare change of clothes—which he’d had stashed at one of his many secret bolt-holes, scattered around Andromeda County, and Heleus City, in particular—Reyes, too, is free of potentially damning physical evidence. A quick, but thorough and scrubby shower, and his usual careful grooming-habits had taken care of that quite nicely.

 

When Reyes had left her ridiculous office, Sloane had been as close to gloating as she ever got, her mind already on the next challenge and the next enemies—her possessive hand inching up Keema’s right thigh—when Reyes had made his discreet and distracted exit.

 

Now, pulled together and—unfortunately— _very_ sober, he pauses just inside the busy bar. From the friendly, but respectful— _always_ respectful—hails he receives almost instantly, he knows that word about what went down with the now-extinct Roekkar Syndicate, hasn’t spread. If it had, the very same people greeting him so welcomingly would be avoiding his gaze and whispering behind his back.

 

It hasn’t spread _yet_ , but . . . it will. And it’ll stick around until time passes and people begin to forget, or get comfortable overlooking the necessary evils that go hand-in-hand with being Sloane Kelly’s second in command.

 

Reyes’s easy, sardonic charm will allow them to pretend, even to themselves, that they _don’t_ know Reyes’s hands are at least as dirty and bloody as Sloane’s.

 

Wearing an almost pained grimace that’s as close to his usual smirk as he’s able to manufacture, he heads, as always, lately, for the bar. From the crowds of people populating the space, he knows the arena in the back must be nearly empty, which means that for the night, the fights are over.

 

Exhausted and numb, he supposes it doesn’t matter. It’s the first night of fights he’s missed in nearly a month, but it won’t be the last. He means to take his obsession with the missing underdog, and lead it around to the back of the shed.

 

Bellying up to the bar, in the space that’s automatically cleared for him without a word spoken, he drops onto the recently-vacated stool and leans on the sticky-ish bar-top. Umi’s behind the bar helping out again. Tonight, she merely looks resigned to her part-time bartender status.

 

When she spots him, she rolls her eyes—he can only imagine she’s sick of the sight of him . . . she wouldn’t be the first—and reaches under the bar-top. She comes up with a tall, but insufficiently dusty bottle of some amber hooch that’s . . . the _exact_ color of Ryder’s eyes when he comes. Reyes grits his teeth in what no one would consider a grin.

 

Looking mildly amused, Umi plonks the bottle and a tumbler down in front of him. He eyes the label, then snorts. “ _Evan Williams_ , Umi? _Really_?” Reyes gives her a wearily jaundiced look. She rolls her eyes.

 

“Whaddaya want from me, Ell Tee? Ya drank all my good stuff.” She shrugs and leans on the bar, ignoring calls for drinks and attempts from other patrons to get her attention, in favor of watching Reyes dourly open the _Evan Williams_ and pour a generous tumblerful.

 

“That kid’s really got you twisted up in knots,” she notes, shining a spotlight on the elephant that’s been in every room Reyes has entered for the past eleven days. He knocks back half his tumbler and winces, not meeting Umi’s gaze. It might be she feels sorry for him . . . might be that she’s just running commentary or making conversation. He has no interest in knowing which.

 

“Not tonight,” he warns quietly, frowning down at hands and fingers that have powder burns, scrapes, and bruises. He feels empty and heavy at the same time. Pointless and hopeless. “Just . . . don’t.”

 

Umi watches him for a few more moments before shrugging and moving down the bar to take more orders.

 

She ignores Reyes while he drinks steadily—he’s more of a scotch whisky-man, than a bourbon-man, but beggars can’t be choosers—feeling no more or less clear-headed than he’d been since getting his marching orders from Sloane at noon. His vision gets blurrier and blurrier, spinnier and spinnier, but his mind . . . _that_ remains unfortunately clear. It dins at him so loud, it’s akin to complete silence. His head is so full—all ghosts and shadows and regrets—it may as well be empty.

 

He is, he realizes with more unwanted clarity and ever-present irony, a fucking _mess_.

 

Reyes stares ahead of him, at the dirty-smudgy mirror behind the top-shelf of the bar—can only just see his own dark, miserable eyes above those bottles, which he’s cut quite the swath through over the past week and a half. He only distantly notices when the bruiser next to him—built like a bison, with dark-brown hair but a _flaming_ red beard—abandons his stool rather suddenly, and with almost fawning deference to whomever he’s offering it.

 

Reyes looks down into his tumbler and wishes he’d thought to ask Umi for ice, so at least he’d have something to do with his teeth other than grit them between sips. . . .

 

He becomes peripherally aware of a faint, spicy scent—like cinnamon and wood-smoke, autumn leaves and . . . threaded through it, some godawful body-spray of the sort only a teenage boy or a _very_ inexperienced twenty-something might think was alluring—under the quintessential scents of bar and varied body odors. Of the regard and nearness of his new neighbor, to the left.

 

Reyes smirks at his bourbon and says nothing. Takes another gulp of the burning stuff that makes his eyes water.

 

 _Of course_ , it’s the bourbon. What else _could_ it be?

 

Snorting softly to himself, he shakes his head. His neighbor’s regard has intensified—is all but _willing_ him to look over. Maybe engage in conversation or flirting.

 

Reyes has no interest in either—nor in being the focus of some leering teeny-bopper’s fantasies.  And he’s about to level a look on his neighbor that says exactly that, only with a lot more threat and dead-eyed promise—Mr. Body-Spray may be new to _Tartarus_ , may not know who’s who, yet, but if he’s not careful, he’ll certainly _find out_ in a hurry—when said neighbor clears his throat nervously, obviously in preparation to speak.

 

Meaning to cut _that_ off at the knees, Reyes rolls his eyes, then turns his head to the left. Words he’ll never speak or remember die on his lips as he finds himself staring into intent, intense amber eyes, in a wary, hopeful face. That face is framed by neat, shoulder-length, midnight hair that’s not in any style, but that’s been brushed until it shines.

 

Reyes, weary and beyond surprise—lacking the emotional reserves for _whatever_ reaction would fit what’s possibly a hallucination—scans his neighbor, taking in the vintage, brown leather jacket; plain, white t-shirt; clean, form-flattering grey jeans; and a pair of comfortable, no-name, white and blue running shoes.

 

His eyes retrace their steps back up, landing once more on that amber gaze, which is brimming with more feeling than they ever have before in _Reyes’s_ presence. Even if he _wants_ to look away—and he isn’t one hundred percent certain that he does—he finds that he _can’t_. Even _blinking_ means going without that broken-pure, vulnerable-strong stare for far too long.

 

It’s _already_ been _far_ too long.

 

“You look like you’re waiting for someone,” Ryder says solemnly, so softly, Reyes barely hears it over the cacophony of _Tartarus_ at peak-hours. Over the slush-thud of his frantic heart. For a brief, but eternal span, he can only sit, trapped in that familiar— _missed_ —amber. He knows that for all his survival instincts and enlightened pragmatism, he’s on the cusp of letting himself drown in those eyes, and whatever incandescently glorious and endlessly strange intangible lies behind them. . . .

 

Reyes is suddenly released from that electric gaze when Ryder’s eyes shift to the nearest bartender— _not_ Umi—and he signals the guy with a raised hand, and a gesture at Reyes’s mostly-empty glass, holding up one finger.

 

The bartender, an older gent with a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache that even Reyes finds bemusing and impressive, nods, and in seconds, Ryder has a glass of his very own. Reyes, meanwhile, has finally remembered what comes after breathing _out_ , and gulps _in_ a breath that shakes and almost whistles through his nose.

 

Ryder reaches past him in a waft of spice-autumn-body-spray, plucks up the bottle of bourbon and scans the label without much interest, then pours himself two fingers, which he then knocks back. Followed by another glass— _three_ fingers, this time—which gets similar treatment. Ryder then places the glass lightly on the bar-top and glances over at Reyes with his wary-hopeful-uncertain eyes. There are questions in them that Reyes doesn’t have the words to answer.

 

So, in the end, he doesn’t even try to. He frowns back down at his remaining bourbon, shoots it, then waves at a fuzzy-edged Umi, who nods without giving him more than an acknowledging glance. Another bottle is added to his massive, long-running tab, but. . . .

 

Perhaps it’ll be the last.

 

Snorting, he stands unsteadily, without so much as another glance at Ryder, and makes his way through a flatteringly deferential and quick-to-part crowd, to the door.

 

When he steps out into the humid, but cooling night, his head still spinning and vision still blurry-fuzzy, he pauses, and wonders if he’ll be left to wait. If he’ll _bother_ to wait. He has his pride, after all.

 

Or _had_ it.

 

But before he can even give that realization proper brooding on, the door to _Tartarus_ opens again behind him, spilling out light and noise. Then it closes, and a soft footstep sounds behind him . . . and there’s a strong whiff of fall, and cheap, terrible body-spray. Plus, the patient, acquiescent feel of that wary-hopeful-uncertain regard.

 

Without looking around, Reyes turns left. And when he starts walking . . . Ryder follows.

 

TBC


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance given . . . and a chance taken. And all the stars in the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Mentions of past underage prostitution.

 

Reyes, as usual, walks home, and Ryder . . . Ryder is but a footfall behind him the entire way, as silent and wraith-like as any other shadow.

 

Though, Ryder not having a change of heart may not mean terribly much, considering that Reyes lives a mere five streets away from _Tartarus_. He owns a converted warehouse that’s been turned into a series of lofts and studio apartments, in a part of the Kadara Projects that’s slowly being gentrified . . . to the disdain and despair of many residents—including Reyes.

 

 _Sloane_ , of course, sees the influx of young, affluent and artsy WASPs as a new wellspring of power and profit.

 

When they approach Reyes’s building, most of the lights in most of the residences are out. Reyes rents primarily to hard-working Kadara natives and immigrants—and for more reasonable prices than such an up-and-coming piece of real estate might demand—who, almost to a person, start their workdays just as Reyes’s is ending his. He’s a good landlord, who employs both an apartment manager and superintendent, to keep the technical side of things running smoothly and beneath his daily notice. His tenants are clean, quiet, respectful, and couldn’t care less what their landlord does when he’s not landlording.

 

 _Of course_ , they don’t. Their options aren’t especially varied, and Reyes knows that he’s by far, the best of a scant few affordable living spaces. His tenants don’t concern themselves with his _curriculum vitae_ and the quiet, dangerous people who occasionally stop by the building, and Reyes—who doesn’t _need_ the income from his tenants—rather likes being surrounded by honest, working folks.

 

It’s a workable set of arrangements for all involved, and has been for going on seven years.

 

As Reyes lets them into the front vestibule via the building’s outer security door, he can feel Ryder close behind him—that whiff of autumn and body-spray, and a gentle, humid-hot breath on his slightly chilled nape.

 

Reyes represses a shudder—a _frisson_ —of pure want. He tells himself that Ryder following him home like a lost puppy means nothing. _Could_ just mean that Ryder finally decided a night off the streets and out of whatever squat he’s been calling home, is worth putting up with a bit of pawing, and slap-and-tickle from a dashing near-stranger.

 

He tells himself that, and almost believes it . . . but for the battered, small, uncertain hope hiding in whatever passes for his heart these days.

 

“Pull the door in behind you till it clicks,” he says absently, the way he does to his tenants and occasional guests, and he pauses to hear that click. When he does, he steps into the small vestibule proper, then unlocks the second security door, which leads to the narrow corridor that passes for a lobby and leads to a freight elevator that’s always slow to arrive, but also silent in its approach.

 

After he’s pushed the **UP** button, they wait for the elevator in silence, Ryder still just that bare half-step behind Reyes, his intent gaze probably on the floor, as per usual, since Reyes can’t feel the burn and yearn, the want and _need_ in that amber-and-ink _stare_.

 

Just acknowledging his own _sensitivity_ to that stare makes him shiver and flush, and start to get hard.

 

Harder.

 

The elevator arrives some interminable time later, and Reyes unlatches and opens the gate, then gestures for Ryder to precede him into the large, well-lit metal space.

 

Head down, eyes demurely locked on his own sneakers, Ryder slips past him quickly, not stopping until he reaches the back wall. At which point, he turns to face Reyes, who’s simply standing at the threshold watching and wanting.

 

A half-minute passes, or perhaps longer, and Ryder finally glances up from under his brows and those incongruously pretty lashes, not moving his head or any other part of himself to do so.

 

Reyes is caught in that gaze . . . caught in the flicker and flare of soul-semaphore that’s _probably_ just minute changes in lighting and very slight shiftings of Ryder’s posture.

 

Those eyes widen and soften . . . there’s a depth of feeling in them that would take Reyes’s breath away, were he a somewhat different sort of person. As it is, he feels that open, vulnerable look like another gut-punch, and when Ryder flushes and averts his gaze once more, Reyes lets out a slow breath and turns to close the gate behind them. Then, he pushes **8** —the entire penultimate floor is his, alone—and turns to face Ryder.

 

As the elevator begins its laborious ascent, he studies the other man almost dispassionately, taking in the clean, shining hair and near-trendy clothes, the not-sweaty skin, and the _incredibly_ affecting taper of Ryder’s body from his broad shoulders and chest, to his narrow waist and hips, and his long, leanly-muscled legs.

 

It’s such a pleasant study, Reyes undertakes it again, this time from the bottom, up. He stops at Ryder’s downcast eyes and the thick, straight, crow-dark hair that frames and nearly obscures them.

 

Reyes sighs and shakes his head, not sure who he’s more exasperated with and rueful about: himself, or this . . . underdog.

 

Ryder shifts slightly, crossing one leg over the other and shoving his mangler-hands in the pockets of his jacket—the grey jeans are just tight enough that he probably _couldn’t_ fit his hands in the pockets even if he wanted to—then taking them back out and letting them hang at his sides.

 

Then he recrosses his legs and licks his lips nervously, flushed and obviously uncomfortable under Reyes’s unwavering regard.

 

“You walked away from me,” Reyes says and in the long-lasting silence that’d been between them since _Tartarus_ , his voice sounds calm, but too loud. Ryder even winces, before he squares his shoulders and looks up, his eyes still wide and vulnerable.

 

“Yes,” Ryder says simply, clearly about to explain himself . . . but at the last second, he closes his mouth on whatever reasons and rationales had driven him. His eyes drop to his sneakers once more and he nods, his spare mouth ticking a little at the left corner. “Yes,” he says again.

 

“There’s no three strikes with _me_ , Ryder. For most people, there isn’t even _one_ ,” Reyes says, stiff and gritted-out. “The next time you walk away . . . don’t bother coming back.”

 

Ryder’s entire face flickers, now: fear-loneliness-need-regret-hope. Then he looks up and meets Reyes’s eyes, his own shining and wet.

 

“Are you . . . clear on the protocol for this . . . arrangement?” Reyes prods when Ryder does nothing but stare for the passage of two whole floors. “Is that something you can handle?”

 

One slow blink and Ryder nods. “Yes.”

 

“You don’t exactly _sound_ sure, Ryder,” Reyes says with negligent disdain, needling the other man the way a small and stupid child would poke at a hornets’ nest with a stick.

 

“Scott,” Ryder says softly, looking down as his brow furrows and his teeth bite into his lower lip for a few seconds. Then he lets out a shaking breath. “It’s . . . Scott. And the _only_ thing I’m sure of anymore is . . . what I want.”

 

“What you _need_ ,” Reyes corrects with heavy sarcasm, and no small amount of bitterness that he’s too tired and disconcerted to hide.

 

“Yes,” Ryder— _Scott_ says again, and looks up. He’s not smiling, but there’s a bright and nearly . . . manic light in his eyes. “What I need . . . but also . . . what I _want_. More than . . . anything.”

 

Reyes frowns and gives Scott another once-over. It’s a rewarding pursuit, with returns that _don’t_ diminish with repetition. “Wants change, Ryder. And needs are often grown out of or away from.”

 

“Not this,” Scott says with quiet certainty—the first certainty he’s displayed since he sat next to Reyes less than half an hour ago. Reyes snorts and leans against the wall, next to the display of floor-buttons.

 

“You need to be sure, Ryder,” he says just as quietly, but with far less confidence. He has no idea where his confidence, whether real or put-on, has gone, but he knows there’s no hiding from Scott in this moment. Perhaps before . . . before time and distance made it _embarrassingly_ apparent just how much this thing between them _matters_ to Reyes . . . and maybe again in the future. Maybe. But for now . . . Reyes is as laid-bare as the young man standing too far away, yet far closer than Reyes had dared to hope he’d ever be again. “Surer than you’ve _ever_ been about anything else in your life.”

 

Scott doesn’t immediately reply—is obviously thinking over what Reyes has said. But sooner than Reyes is entirely comfortable with, Scott pushes away from the wall and crosses the distance between them. When he’s just within Reyes’s personal bubble, and once more holding Reyes’s wary gaze, Scott sinks gracefully, deliberately to his knees. His eyes remain locked on Reyes’s all the way down and even thereafter, as he takes a deep breath and closes the last bit of distance between them, still on his knees.

 

“I’m sure,” he says, his voice unbearably young and earnest, impossibly strong and steady. Then he leans forward until his warm face is pressed to Reyes’s abdomen. His hands, however, those dangerous, brutal hands, come up to settle gently, reverently on Reyes’s hips. “I’m _sure_.”

 

The murmur is fervent and rumbling, humid and hot even through Reyes’s button-down navy shirt. Subsequent breaths shake and shudder in a way that suggests Scott is trying _very_ hard not to break-down.

 

Reyes stares down at the younger man, into that shining, four-a.m. hair. His uncomplicated desire to touch it is all it takes for his hand to drop hesitantly on Scott’s head. His hair is coarse and thick, but soft. It all but _demands_ that Reyes twine his fingers in it and tug, so he does, and . . . the sound Scott makes is so many of the things Reyes has been needing and never gotten.

 

Until now.

 

He tugs again on Scott’s hair . . . gently. Scott looks up at him with wet, slightly red eyes in a face that’s far younger and far older than any age Reyes has supposed him to be.

 

 _What_ are _you?_ he wants to exclaim, awed and angry and more than a little frightened. Not of _Scott_ , but of what Scott _means_ for him. Of this complete reassessment— _rearrangement_ of the person Reyes has been for so long, that he’s not sure how to be anything _else_. _Who_ _are you, Scott Ryder, and_ how _is it that_ I’m _holding the reins, but_ you’re _the one with all the power?_

 

But Reyes says none of this. What he says, instead, is: “You’re welcome to stay the night.”

 

And he holds his breath as he says it. After all, the last time he had . . . hadn’t worked out so well.

 

This time, however, Scott turns a gaze so intensely yearning and trusting on him—so broken up and surrendered—that Reyes can’t even draw in a sufficient breath for the raw emotion emanating from those amber depths.

 

Then, Scott smiles, sweet and sad and relieved. Most of all . . . _relieved_.

 

“I’d like that,” he says with simple, unadorned gratitude. And Reyes’s hand migrates from Scott’s shadowy hair to the soft skin of his cheek. Scott leans into Reyes’s caress with grave affection, still maintaining eye-contact.

 

 _You make me feel real. You make me feel like_ someone. _You make me_ feel, Reyes wishes he could say, but can’t. He knows he may _never_ be able to—he’s not that sort of man. Not . . . open-hearted and pure of purpose. Not brave and honest. He wears armor around his heart and leaves the wearing of one’s _heart_ _as_ _armor_ for the Scott Ryders of the world, and contents himself with admiring from afar. Or, sometimes, a _lot_ closer than that.

 

Reyes can only be who he is, it’s true. But right now . . . _who he is_ , is a man who unexpectedly has the world in the palm of his hand.

 

The elevator stops with ponderous slowness, as if unsure that it’s reached its destination. Reyes glances over his shoulder and sees the brief, blank hallway that leads to his floor-wide almost-penthouse.

 

“It’s this way,” he tells his underdog, smirking down at Scott wryly and holding out his other hand. That hand is taken with faith and without hesitation. Reyes tugs on Scott’s mangler-mitt until understanding lights those reverent eyes and a smile lights that solemn face. Reyes’s smirk becomes a fond smile, too, as the other man slowly stands up, his eyes steady-open on Reyes’s. “That’s it, Scott. On your feet.”

 

#

 

“Wow,” Scott says, his voice soft and earnest with awe as he gazes out of the picture-windows in Reyes’s night-dark, tastefully-spare living room. “This is some view.”

 

Beyond the glass, the clear, crisp night is a-twinkle with stars, scattered almost haphazardly across the jeweler’s velvet of the Milky Way. The Kadara Projects, by dint of being not nearly as well-lit as other, tone-ier parts of Heleus City, is _excellent_ for star-gazing, as Reyes has long known.

 

Smiling indulgently, Reyes approaches Scott from where he’d been making them drinks at the bar, which takes up one side of his living room. He ascends the three steps that demarcate the boundary between the living room and what Reyes whimsically calls the Overlook.

 

Despite the darkness of the room, he easily, from habit, skirts the black leather love-seat—and one of two quirky wicker chairs to either side of it—on the flat rise, and stops just behind Scott. The other man inclines his body toward Reyes, but doesn’t take his dazzled eyes from all the stars in the sky.

 

“I used to wanna be an astronaut and explore far-flung galaxies,” he admits softly, hesitantly, sadly. “When I was a kid.”

 

“You’re _still_ a kid.”

 

“Nah.” Scott sighs, wistful and somewhat weary. “Not for a long time, now.”

 

He falls silent and continues to star-gaze with an intensity that almost seems like self-flagellation. Reyes understands that even this, this unexpected peek at the hope and innocence that comprised and _still_ comprises the core of Scott Ryder is a gift that’s being given to him without reserve.

 

Reyes offers Scott his drink—a simple rum-and-cola, light on the rum, heavy on the cola—by pressing the chilled glass against the younger man’s shoulder to capture his attention.

 

“Oh!” Scott finally turns to face Reyes, smiling and probably flushed, and accepts the drink, taking one large, nervous sip before meeting Reyes’s eyes quite shyly. “Thanks.”

 

Reyes shrugs, taking a smaller sip of his own beverage— _also_ a rum and cola, light on the cola, heavy on the rum—himself dazzled by the silvery cast lent to Scott’s coppery skin by the distant stars. “I offered you the hospitality of my home. There’s really no sense in half-assing said hospitality.”

 

Scott grins, then chuckles. “Yeah, but . . . you keep _whole_ -assing the hospitality, and I just may hang around . . . wear out my welcome.”

 

Reyes lets his right eyebrow slowly quirk up. “Doubtful, Scott. But . . . you’re more than welcome to try your best.”

 

Scott flushes so deep, Reyes actually _can_ see it now, then his gaze finally drops from Reyes’s again, to the scant, but suddenly intolerable space between their bodies.

 

This is another distance that _needs closing_ , and this time, _Reyes_ is the one to close it. Once he’s squarely in Scott’s space and the other man’s eyes are wide on his, Reyes wraps his free arm around Scott’s waist and slowly pulls that warm, hard, dense body against his own. Scott goes easily and _fits_ against him like he was made to Reyes’s exact specs.

 

He’s hard, too, though not as hard as Reyes is—perhaps due to nerves and uncertainty that likely _more_ than rivalled Reyes’s own—and his wide eyes get even wider as Reyes’s erection presses hot and unmistakable against his abdomen.

 

When Reyes smirks and leans in closer, as if to steal a kiss, Scott swallows nervously, but obediently turns his face up to Reyes’s. His eyes flutter instinctively shut even as he tries to maintain if not eye-contact, then his view of Reyes’s face. Reyes chuckles and nuzzles Scott’s nose gently, not terribly surprised when the younger man shivers and makes a small, needy noise low in his throat.

 

It’s only then that Reyes turns his attention to Scott’s slightly parted lips, brushing them with his own in a tender tease, and with flirting flickers of his tongue. He keeps this up until Scott is all but gasping and moaning for a _real_ kiss, which Reyes is more than happy to supply. He captures Scott’s mouth with instant intimacy, no longer teasing or flirting, but _claiming and possessing_ this sweetly wanton bit of the man who’ll _very_ shortly be _Reyes’s_ . . . in part and in whole.

 

Scott isn’t overly experienced with kissing, that’s clear—he’s quickly overwhelmed by Reyes and is smart enough not to try to impress or even keep up. Instead, he submits himself to Reyes’s desire wholly, making himself as open and available and pliant as Reyes wants.

 

And Reyes . . . wants it _all_.

 

And he wants whatever impossibilities may wait beyond _that_.

 

For the first time in his life, he feels as if he’s somehow saying this and more with his kiss . . . holding whole conversations and making sweeping declarations without saying a word.

 

He instinctively begins backing Scott up toward the picture window, not interrupting the kiss to do so. When Scott’s back hits the nearly floor-to-ceiling middle pane, he grunts in surprise and there’s a tinkle of breaking glass that ends the kiss for them.

 

“Sorry,” Scott pants, all hugely dilated pupils surrounded by the thinnest ring of silvery-gold. Then he’s glancing down at the floor next to them. Reyes follows his gaze and sees spilled liquor and cola, and shattered glass. He snorts and leans back a little to knock back his own rum and cola.

 

“That’s quite all right, Ryder . . . the floor broke the fall,” he says dryly, and leans down to his left just enough to drop the glass without breaking it and without letting go of Scott’s waist. When he straightens once more, he pins Scott to the huge pane of glass, pressing his body hard against the younger man’s. Scott moans, soft and desperate, and Reyes grins.

 

“I must say,” he drawls, “I’ve never fucked anyone against the backdrop of the Milky Way.”

 

Scott huffs a laugh, breathless and needy. “Neither have I. Guess that makes us pioneers.”

 

“Hmm, something like that.” Reyes’s brow furrows a bit as something else occurs to him. “You, er . . . _have_ been with a man before?”

 

Scott’s eyes flicker: soft-hard-soft. “I have,” he admits, looking down. “I mean . . . I’ve . . . had to do some stuff when money was tight and things were . . . _bad_. I had people to take care of. People who counted on me, that I couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ let down.”

 

Reyes feels a strange pang in his chest and his gut that’s akin to despair and rage, and a childish resentment that the world is _not_ a fair place. Even though, even as a child, Reyes had known it never could be.

 

“That’s . . . laudable, your dedication to the people you care about,” Reyes decides with sincere respect, his voice unusually solemn, “but I was curious if you’ve ever . . . been to bed with a man for pleasure only.”

 

Scott’s brows jump a little and he smiles, weary and apologetic. “For pleasure _only_? No,” he says with an even mix of shame and regret. Reyes leans in to buss the spot between Scott’s eyes, then the tip of his nose, then the corner of his mouth.

 

“Then consider me _honored_ to be your first,” he murmurs on Scott’s rum-bitter, cola-sweet lips, before licking his way back into their kiss. Scott’s entire body acquiesces to Reyes’s with almost genteel grace, curving and complying with whatever _Reyes’s_ body demands of it.

 

It isn’t long before Reyes’s body begins demanding a move to Reyes’s _bed_.

 

Pulling Scott away from the window—and somehow managing to back around the loveseat and wicker chair, and down the shallow steps into the living room, without tripping or falling—Reyes lets his hands at last wander from their clench on Scott’s waist, to the firm, tight muscle of his ass.

 

That’s good for a moan and a hungry, hot flash in those lust- and shadow-darkened eyes.

 

Scott opens his mouth to utter what Reyes is sure will be a demand of his own. “Fuck me,” perhaps, or even “Rip my clothes off.”

 

But what comes out of Scott’s kiss-swollen lips, on the back of a soft, gusting exhale, is: “ _Please_ , Reyes . . . please. . . .”

 

This time, _Reyes_ is the one to moan. At the plea and at the way Scott’s voice drops to a hoarse whisper on his name, like the most delicious and blasphemous profanity anyone could possibly utter. His desire and need are so naked, it’s _deeply_ humbling, even to a man such as Reyes Vidal.

 

“Of course, Scott. For _you_? _Anything_ ,” he promises, putting just enough distance between their heated and ravenous bodies to turn and lead them to his bedroom. The whole apartment is completely dark, but Reyes knows his space down to the last inch. He could get them to bed safely even if he went suddenly blind, and his certainty must be obvious to Scott. His mangler-hand is so trusting and quiescent in Reyes’s, that it makes Reyes’s heart _hurt_ . . . and slowly, painstakingly expand. “ _Everything_.”

 

TBC


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anything and everything . . . all the things Reyes wishes he could say and all the things he’s never let himself feel. And _Scott_ , of course. Before, after, and through it _all_ . . . Scott.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Allusions to past underage non-con/drugged sex.

 

The view from Reyes’s bedroom isn’t as spectacular as the one from the Overlook in the living room. It’s of the distant city-center, all bright-lights and commercial buildings, drowning out the natural wonder of the universe that spins above.

 

But for once, Reyes’s focus is entirely on a _terrestrial_ wonder . . . the one standing in front of him, so fetchingly anxious and modest as he disrobes in fits and starts, with scared, averted eyes.

 

Reyes is sitting on the foot of his large bed, still completely dressed, but for his shoes and socks, and the open fly from which his hard-on pokes, as red as Scott’s face and leaking steadily at the tip. Next to his right thigh is a mostly-full tube of lube. Every so often, Scott’s eyes stray to it then dart away to the floor or the window.

 

“Eyes on me, Ryder,” Reyes reminds him, leaning back on his hands to savor the show he'd insisted on—had wanted badly enough to halt Scott, who’d been eagerly dropping to his knees and reaching for Reyes’s fly.

 

“I want to see what belongs to me,” Reyes had murmured, the command couched in desire both thick and deep. Scott’s already wide eyes had widened further, but he’d straightened and nodded, then begun to undress with that curious, endearing mix of hesitance and efficiency.

 

Now, less than half a minute into the show, Scott’s jacket is already gone—laying in a puddle of brown leather near Reyes’s dresser. The t-shirt, too, is gone, and Scott’s hard chest, stomach, and abdomen, are all sharp-edged shadows and dramatic definition. The form-fitting, low-slung grey jeans are unbuttoned and, after a moment of hesitation, Scott’s skinning them down his narrow hips and lean, long thighs.

 

Once again, he’s not wearing underwear. His girthy, uncut cock stands up proudly from space-dark pubic hair and at this second glimpse of it, Reyes’s breath still catches. He’s never been particularly . . . fond of _taking_ _cock_ in any fashion—an unfortunate byproduct of an incident during his misspent teen years, involving a party at a _notorious_ frat house on the NU campus, copious amounts of hard alcohol, and passing out in the _wrong_ place . . . then waking up at the _wrong_ time—but in this, as in all things, it seems, Scott’s making a liar of Reyes.

 

At the very least, Reyes finds himself contemplating getting his mouth on Scott and slowly, but methodically taking the other man apart with it. And perhaps, at some point down the line . . . perhaps Reyes just might even _consider_ offering to bottom. Just to give Scott an experience he’s probably never had, and to keep things . . . interesting.

 

If anyone could top effectively even from the bottom, it’s Reyes Vidal.

 

Scott’s jeans are halfway down his wiry calves when he kicks them the rest of the way off, then away, standing naked and slump-shouldered before Reyes. His eyes are ashamed and apologetic. He clearly wants to look anywhere else, but he continues to obey, nonetheless.

 

“Good,” Reyes praises, sitting up straight again and picking up the lube. He flicks the cap open and surveys Scott with intense anticipation and almost brooding thoughtfulness. “Come here.”

 

Scott swallows and takes a step forward. Then another. Then another. When he’s close enough to touch, Reyes does so, leaning forward to kiss the center of Scott’s sternum, and down lower. He follows a faint trail-of-Heaven, not stopping until he’s confronted with Scott’s cock. After tracing it with eager, yearning eyes, he sighs, and glances up at Scott, who’s watching him with saucer-wide pupils and a shocked gape.

 

“Have you ever been on the receiving end of a blow-job?” Reyes asks bluntly. Scott blinks, then shakes his head no.

 

“I haven’t been on the _giving_ end much, myself. Not recently, anyway, but . . . back in the day, I made a name for myself, shall we say?” Reyes admits humbly, shunting aside that pang in his chest and gut that he suspects are the great bulk of his lifetime supply of compassion and empathy, all being spent on Scott Ryder. It’s . . . rather alarming. But, being a man of action, there seems no better solution to Reyes’s own megrims than the action the moment practically _demands_. “We’ll see if I still live up to being _The Mouth_ . . . not that that’ll be a chore for _me_. With a cock _this_ gorgeous, it’s an _honor_. And a shame no one’s ever taken the time to appreciate it _properly_.”

 

Holding that wide, shocked, dazed gaze, he leans back in, and takes up the enviable task of re-earning his old title.

 

Scott groans loud and long when Reyes licks the tip of his cock, slow and wet. The groans come with increasing frequency as Reyes explores and teases, tastes and plays, until the room resounds with what seems like one continuous moan of agonized pleasure.

 

Like Reyes, Scott is uncut and _like Reyes_ , Scott also enjoys rough foreskin-play—he had apparently been understating when he’d admitted to liking teeth . . . he screams like a banshee and nearly comes, but for the hand Reyes clamps on the base of his cock, after having his foreskin nipped at repeatedly—though, of necessity, Reyes winds up having to gentle Scott back from the very edge, when the stimulus proves too much. Reyes turns from licks and nips, to nuzzles and kisses along Scott’s thick, turgid length, learning the bitter-salty-musky taste and scent of him, and imprinting it on his olfactory memory.

 

When Scott’s moans have lost some of their edgy urgency, Reyes feels on the bed for the open lube and, letting go of Scott’s cock, coats the first two fingers of his right hand. Then he meets those big, anxious, but unquestioning eyes and smiles.

 

With his left hand firmly stroking Scott’s cock again, Reyes reaches around with his right to Scott’s ass. The younger man tenses automatically, even with Reyes dedicatedly sucking and tonguing the tip of his cock. He actually jumps a little each time Reyes’s index finger brushes his entrance fleetingly. Then less fleetingly. Then presses against it firmly, before teasing the circumference.

 

When Scott’s body relaxes enough—stops jumping and starts shivering—to allow shallow penetration, Reyes does so. Scott gasps, his body tensing right back up . . . for about three seconds before it suddenly relaxes once more and Scott sighs, all relief and gratitude, again.

 

After that, with patience, and careful stretching and preparation, it’s not long—from Reyes’s privileged vantage-point—until Scott’s ready for two fingers.

 

Again, he tenses up, and again, he quickly relaxes—leans into the burn and scissoring stretch of Reyes’s gentle, but implacable ministrations.

 

“No, _please_ , no,” Scott begs shamelessly when Reyes eventually removes his hand to coat his ring finger and recoat the first two. “ _Reyes_. . . .”

 

“Hush . . . I said _anything_ , remember? And _everything_ , too, right?” Reyes whispers down Scott’s hard, angry-red length, before nuzzling into his pubic hair, then shifting a bit to nip at Scott’s thigh. Just sharp enough to sting. Sharp enough to distract Scott’s body as he pushes his three, slick fingers past the first ring of muscle. Then a good deal further than that. In fact, he doesn’t stop until Scott chokes out a gasp when Reyes’s fingertips brush prostate.

 

And even then, he only draws back enough to change his angle.

 

Scott’s legs are shaking before too much longer. Reyes has stretched him for as long as he dares, avoiding his prostate again, certain more than the lightest of touches would set Scott off.

 

And Scott’s not the only one fighting not to finish prematurely. Reyes pauses in his stroking of Scott’s cock, to buck up off his mattress several times, until he’s singlehandedly shoved down his slacks and boxers. Mid-thigh is about as far as he has the patience to push them down before he’s kissing Scott’s abdomen again, nipping and nuzzling the fragile skin. With his free hand, he squirts lube directly onto his own cock—it’s chill is enough to make him shiver a little—and spreads it around thoroughly. A glance up at Scott shows the other man is red-faced, sweating, and wild-eyed, gazing down at Reyes like he’s an incubus.

 

Smirking, Reyes nuzzles the top of Scott’s thigh and scissors his fingers in Scott’s warm, willing body. That’s good for a moan and a flutter of those pretty-lashed eyelids.

 

“ _Please_ ,” Scott says again, and this time, his voice isn’t a moan. It’s a low, firm, assertion of his preferences. His wants. His . . . _needs_.

 

“It’s . . . important to me that you don’t . . . _regret_ . . . that you never look back on this and feel . . . _cheated_. Or coerced,” Reyes struggles to say without slipping into maudlin self-pity. It should suffice that he’s willing to, for Scott’s first time, sacrifice his _own_ preferences and desires. Reyes wouldn’t wish a first time like his—painful and frightening, forced and psychologically devastating—on _anyone_. _Least of all_ , Scott Ryder. “It’ll be . . . easiest and most comfortable for you if we lie on our sides.”

 

Scott blinks and frowns . . . then smiles wry and just a tiny bit less dazed. Almost knowing, in fact. Though, _what_ he knows, Reyes chooses not to speculate about. He’s not sure he’s ready to hear the answer and, anyway, _now_ isn’t the time.

 

“Probably,” Scott agrees, shrugging. “But if I wanted _easy and comfortable_ , I wouldn’t be _here_ , would I?”

 

“Fair enough.” Reyes gratefully lets the matter lie. He eases his fingers out of Scott, then grasps those narrow hips gently, guiding Scott forward, scooting his own body up the bed a bit, so that his feet no longer touch the floor. Scott watches with curious, but uncomprehending eyes as Reyes reclines, flat on his back, stroking his slippery cock slow and hard. “Come and get it, then, Ryder . . . if you want it so bad.”

 

Scott’s puzzled gaze darts helplessly between Reyes’s eyes and Reyes’s stroking hand, and he licks his lips like a thirsting man eyeing a glass of ice-water.

 

“Well?” Reyes inquires archly, bucking up again, into his own hand, and doing some moaning of his own. “What’re you waiting for, Scott? Time to live up to that surname, and . . . _ride ‘er_.”

 

Reyes gestures at his cock graciously, genuinely curious as to how this will play out—letting Scott show some initiative and ambition.

 

When understanding dawns on him, a moment later, Scott’s mouth drops open in utter shock and for a solid minute, he looks completely lost and overwhelmed.

 

Then he huffs and shakes his head once, as if waking from a vivid daydream, and smirks . . . all defiance and hunger . . . but no fury. He kneels on the bed gingerly, then crawls toward the headboard until he’s straddling Reyes’s thighs, the zipper of Reyes’s fly probably biting into his inner thighs. Then into the cheeks of his ass as he scoots a bit closer and sits on Reyes’s lap. He studies Reyes’s cock with both wonder and trepidation, running his finger along the throbbing vein and across the wet, swollen head. Reyes can’t help the grunted “fuck” that escapes his lips, rumbling and desperate, as Scott explores him with innocence and an utter lack of his previous painful self-consciousness.

 

Finally, he brings his wet finger to his mouth and sucks it clean almost rapturously, as if he’s been going his whole life waiting for exactly this taste of Reyes.

 

Reyes shivers and grins so wide, it makes his face hurt. “You gonna tease me forever, Ryder, or claim what’s _yours_?”

 

Scott’s face goes young-vulnerable-yearning for a moment. But _just_ a moment, before he smirks around his finger, sucking on it suggestively as he gets to his knees again and crawls up Reyes’s body a little _more_. Until the tip of Reyes’s cock is prodding between his ass-cheeks and Reyes’s eyes are closed so tight, they _ache_.

 

He knows that if he looks at Scott for even a _second_ longer . . . that’ll indeed be _all_ she wrote.

 

 _Thank goodness I know the outer limits of my self-control_ , Reyes thinks with some relief of his own, and no small amount of sheepishness. _Thank goodness_ —

 

But then Scott’s gripping Reyes’s cock tight in one mangler-hand and holding himself open with the other. He sits up off Reyes’s lap slightly as he guides Reyes into his body . . . sitting back down s-l-o-w-l-y, all gasps and swears and moans.

 

Actually . . . the gasping, swearing, and moans are all _Reyes_. _Scott’s_ as silent as the grave as he impales himself carefully on Reyes’s cock. Reyes can feel that intense, yearning gaze on him like sunlight. Like moonlight. Like the light of _every star in the galaxy_ blessing him with their infinite beneficence.

 

And perhaps the universe _is_ fairer than Reyes had thought, after all. Or perhaps it’s just randomly kind. Whichever it is, when Reyes—now, officially beyond the current limits of his control—instinctively bucks up again, driving himself deeper and faster into Scott’s tight, hot, clenching-clasping-claiming body, Scott cries out, high and breathless. It sounds like it _might_ be pain, but Scott’s bearing down on him and _keeping_ him like it’s _definitely_ _pleasure_ , and when Reyes dares to open his eyes to gauge the situation, it’s to see Scott with _his_ _eyes_ squinched shut, his lower lip caught between his teeth, and one big hand tight with restraint on his cock.

 

He’s . . . _everything_ , in that moment. And in all the moments that will come after that. Reyes can admit that to himself, now. Later may bring prevarications and obfuscations, but for now . . . Reyes is beyond _everything_ but the raw honesty that comes with having one’s wants and needs shown plainly to oneself.

 

“ _Ride me_ ,” he pants out— _begs_ —his voice stripped of calm and command, shaking and reed-thin. Scott shivers and shakes his head no.

 

“Can’t.”

 

Huffing a laugh and fighting the urge to roll them over and take what _he_ wants more than he’s ever wanted anything—fighting the urge to just buck up _once more_ . . . get a _little_ deeper, still, and just _come,_ until he bursts a blood vessel in his brain—he places his hands on Scott’s tense, hard thighs. Muscles jump like excited tadpoles under smooth, hot, pale-copper skin.

 

“Then look at me.”

 

“Can’t do that, either.”

 

Reyes levers himself up on one arm, until he’s closer to Scott. But not quite close _enough_. “Then, I’ll settle for a kiss,” he says, reaching up with his other hand to brush trembling fingers down Scott’s damp cheek. Only some of that dampness is sweat.

 

With a protracted shiver, Scott licks his lips, then moves in slowly, carefully—the shift and play of his tight, greedy body around Reyes’s cock is the _best_ kind of revelation. An epiphany that nearly flattens Reyes’s being. As a result, the kiss he meets Scott for is more ardor and clumsy, riotous passion, than technique. But it’s _good_. _Very_ good. _So_ good, that Scott finally tears free of it with a startled, dismayed cry, and comes all over himself and Reyes, who watches his lover be unmade by the force of his own met and sated—as well as his still-nascent and as yet unexplored—needs.

 

Even those clasping-claiming muscles, pulsing and throbbing and _convulsing_ around Reyes like the best kind of vise, can’t distract him from the sight of Scott quaking and gasping his way through a release that’s leveling them both in different, but complimentary ways.

 

Reyes doesn’t blink once, it feels like, until Scott, with a tiny, drained whimper, slumps forward above him, eyes still shut, shaggy hair curtaining his still, young, broken-open face.

 

“Think you can look at me _now_ , Scott?” Reyes exhales on a fond laugh, levering himself up once more out of a sprawl. This time, he doesn’t stop until he’s upright, with his hands on Scott’s waist. They tremble with the crumbling of his near-agonizing self-restraint.

 

Scott snorts out an apologetic, distracted _giggle_. “Still gonna need a minute.”

 

Reyes chuckles and mentally counts down the seconds, since he’s feeling generous and expansive. At _twenty-three_ , however, he’s too hungry and hard and impatient to finish. Even generosity has its ceiling, he supposes.

 

“ _One_ ,” he growls, rolling them over in a quick, careful take-down that reverses their positions and doesn’t disengage Reyes from Scott. _Much_. But it’s all right, since he pulls most of the way out anyhow. Until only the very tip of his cock is still in Scott’s sweetly-giving, sweetly- _given_ body. He takes a moment to savor the anticipation of reclaiming what’s already _his_ , and all of him smiles down at all of Scott. His hands clamp down on the sweat-slippery skin of Scott’s hip and ass, respectively. “Time’s up.”

 

Barely-amber eyes that are mostly inky-pupils open as Reyes pushes Scott’s thighs wider and higher. Just simultaneous, light touches on his knees is all that’s needed, Scott takes direction so beautifully and instinctively. And despite their blown-wide awe, the challenge and fire Reyes remembers from the prep-room is kindling in that _everything_ -gaze.

 

So, with his renowned focus brought to bear on the matters at hand, Reyes finds the exact position and leverage he wants, then drives hard and fast back into Scott’s waiting, welcoming body. Scott gasps so hard, it’s a near silent scream, and his lashes flutter rapidly and his eyes roll back . . . but he doesn’t blink. He dazedly recaptures and holds Reyes’s gaze—and holds it and holds it—until, some eternal span later, Reyes is, himself, unmade.

 

Completely.

 

Between one determined, powerful, but no longer precise thrust, and the one after it, which was still in the making, he simply slides home in a final, weary, used-up collapse, and _comes_. He comes like _dying_ , hot-cold, hard-soft, flashing lights and fireworks, but velvet darkness, too.

 

As the iron-cruel claws of sweet-secret-sharp _bliss_ , pure, merciless, and unparalleled, take him apart down to the smallest scrap of himself, he _welcomes_ it—eggs it on with a smirk and a laugh. Because he _knows_ he’s being extinguished like an already guttering candle. But he knows he’ll also be _reborn_. _Different_ , yes. But it’ll be in _Scott’s_ _arms_ , so . . . whatever _different_ turns out to be, Reyes figures it can’t be _too_ bad.

 

And it will _burn_ _brightly_ . . . a _thousand-thousand_ times brighter than _any_ sun. Brighter than Reyes had ever _dared_ to burn before.

 

This— _Scott_ —is Reyes’s _true_ reason for being, found.

 

And, also, his unending _obsession_ with this newfound reason—his _one person_ , his _irreplaceable_ someone, his chosen flavor of utter _madness_ —taking over, forever after.

 

Reyes is . . . _infinite_ magnitudes of _all right_ with that.

 

Then even _that_ last scrap of self-realization is _gone_ , leaving behind nothing but uncomplicated joy, and a growing, amorphous, unfamiliar _hope_ that’s somehow larger and more precious than the entire world.

 

TBC


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early and late, in the Morning After: Questions receive answers, secrets get shared, identities are revealed, and decisions get made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Present-day AU. Non-graphic mentions of violence, murder, and character death. Allusions to underage prostitution.

 

The first time Reyes wakes up after his ignominious, post-coital swoon and unconsciousness—he doesn’t kick himself _too_ terribly hard about that, considering it was the most powerful, intense orgasm of his life, to date—it’s still dark out, not even false dawn.

 

He’s lying on his back, as usual. What’s _not_ usual, and pleasantly so, is the warm, pliant body curled up with him. Scott conforms and clings to Reyes’s side in his sleep, his breathing soft and even and deep. His face is warm and slack on Reyes’s chest—right over his heart—one big, mangler-hand curled up near his mouth like a toddler.

 

He sleeps like a child. Like an innocent. Like a man who’s _already_ earned every moment of good sleep that’s been allotted to him for the next _six_ _lives_.

 

In the semi-bright light of distant Midtown Heleus, Scott’s crow-shadow hair has a soft, restful sheen to it—one that draws Reyes’s admiring eyes and affectionate hand . . . and, sooner rather than later, his reverent lips.

 

Despite the feather-lightness of the kiss, Scott begins to stir and mutter, his lax hand clenching into a loose fist on Reyes’s still-clothed chest.

 

“Don’ . . . Dad. . . .” he sighs, soft and hopeless . . . and so ineffably sad. Reyes freezes, a horrible, horrible bit of speculation forming in his suspicious and morbid—even, apparently, when it’s only half-awake—mind.

 

But then, it’d explain so much, wouldn’t it? Scott’s intense _need_ to and instinctive yearning to submit? To be subjugated—taken— _conquered_? By an older man, no less?

 

For a few minutes, Reyes’s upward spiral reverses direction sharply, leaving him in a maelstrom of torment and tumult—leaving him _torn_. He may be a criminal and a low-life, but he’s not a _monster_. Not enough of one to take advantage of a man—a _boy_ —so damaged and broken. . . .

 

Thankfully, Scott’s next burbled sigh dispels that particular suspicion: “Don’ fight ‘im, Dad . . . he’s a _killerrrrr_. . . .”

 

Relieved as Reyes is that he’s for once read a situation entirely wrong—he has literally _never_ been more relieved in his entire life over _anything_ —his mind won’t stop turning. Won’t stop chewing on those two slurred statements, or the ones that follow before Scott sinks back into a deeper, less haunted sleep.

 

Reyes can make out several partial statements, including some names: Sara. Sam. Vetra. Cora. And _Jones_ . . . this last said with so much unleavened hate, it makes Reyes glad, indeed, Scott is, for however long, on _his_ side. Especially when it’s followed by Scott’s next statement, as clear as Scott’s rambling, raging dreams can make it:

 

“I’mma kill ‘im, Sara . . . _gotta_. . . .”

 

There’re several other unhappy and angry exclamations that are too garbled for Reyes to make heads or tails of, but that last one . . . that last one dogs him until well after dawn has touched the sky and Scott is once more quiescent, his hand again a loosely-curled toddler-fist.

 

The next time he wakes up, he hadn’t even realized his tired mind had slipped into a thin, restless, second sleep. Until he wakes from a nightmare of his own, featuring last night’s decimation of the Roekkar stronghold. Blood and bullets, sobs and screams. Second verse? Same as the first.

 

And, eventually, silence.

 

In the end . . . it was always _silent_.

 

Pretty standard fare in Reyes’s line of work, such dreams. He doesn’t need an expensive shrink or an advanced degree to know that such dreams are likely born of the desperate, unheeded wailings of whatever is left of the conscience he’s never really had.

 

Said conscience only has the strength to pester him when he’s sleeping, though, so he pays it little or no mind in his waking hours.

 

And it is, indeed, well into his normal waking hours when he opens his eyes to mid-morning sunlight and an otherwise empty bed.

 

Groaning through a definite, but fading hangover, Reyes blinks until his eyes adjust, and sits up, looking around his Spartan bedroom.

 

Scott’s nowhere to be seen, though his shirt and jacket, shoes and socks are right where he’d dropped them earlier.

 

Reyes smiles, pleased that his pretty bird hasn’t flown in the harsh light of day.

 

With a grunt, he carefully shifts until he can swing his legs over the right side of his big bed. He grumbles as his bare feet touch the cold floor and places his hands on his thighs. His black trousers are still halfway down his thighs and covered in dried come. So are his thighs and groin, for that matter. His cock is, unsurprisingly, hard—morning, after all—and poking out like a dowsing rod. Or a hound on the scent. Reyes smirks down at it.

 

“Well?” he rumbles. “Go on, boy! Find Scott!”

 

Reyes finds it amusing, even if his cock doesn’t.

 

Another few minutes of occasional yawns and blinking, stretching and chest scratching, and Reyes is ready to stand up and take on the day. Whatever it has in store.

 

#

 

“. . . is completely _insane_ , Scotty! And you know it, deep down, or else you _wouldn’t_ have to fight so hard to keep this nonsense up!”

 

Scott sighs heavily, a dark silhouette against the Overlook’s backdrop of blue sky and white clouds. He holds the phone, which is on speaker, to his chest for a few moments, clearly trying to calm himself. When this doesn’t seem to work, he hangs his head and breathes slowly, his messy hair once more obscuring that stark, compelling profile. He’s bare-chested and his pants are riding low and inviting on his narrow hips.

 

Reyes feels a startlingly intense curl of desire in the pit of his stomach, the base of his spine, and his balls. But he’s used to compartmentalizing, and lets his body do what it’ll _always_ do when within a thousand miles of Scott Ryder. His _mind_ , however, focuses on the conversation between his lover and the worried woman on the phone.

 

Eavesdropping is one of his many skills and prerogatives, and he has no qualms about doing it. Never has.

 

“You don’t understand, Sara,” Scott finally says, raising the phone to his face once more, his voice low and tired, as if he’s said this so many times before, it’s lost all meaning for him. “This isn’t something I have a choice about. Remember what Dad used to say: When you see an injustice you _can_ correct, you _have_ to correct it, or be complicit in it.”

 

The woman on the phone— _Sara_ —sighs in frustration and aggrievement.

 

“Dad’s _dead_ ,” she says quietly, as if she, too, has been saying it for so long, it now has less meaning than the soughing of the wind. “He’s dead and _you’re_ following in his footsteps—marching like a good little soldier to the same end! You’re . . . you’re gonna _die in the ring like Dad did,_ if you keep this up, Scotty!”

 

Scott pinches the bridge of his nose, as if he has a headache. “Same path, Sara-bear . . . different end. _I’m_ not the one who’s gonna die in the ring. _He_ is. I’ll make sure of it. I won’t stop till he’s burning in Hell.” His voice is hard, determined, flat and unmoved.

 

Reyes, for the first time, recognizes a true kindred spirit. Though their obsessions are vastly different, their focused and insistent madnesses are akin to each other . . . are practically the same.

 

“And if you lose?” Sara’s voice sounds hoarse and thick, as if she’s speaking around tears she can’t fight anymore. “What about Sam, Scott? What about me?”

 

Scott doesn’t answer for a long time. When he does, it becomes apparent that Sara’s not the only one losing the fight against tears. “You and the Sammich’ll be fine,” he insists with faux-jocularity. “You’ve _been_ fine for almost two years. Vetra’s taken great care of you both. She’s—”

 

“—not my big brother,” Sara interjects, and for another while, there’s more silence.

 

“She loves you,” Scott says eventually. “ _Both_ of you. She _needs_ you.”

 

“And we love and need _her_ , too, but, Scott . . . that doesn’t mean we don’t also love and need _you_.” Another silent pause, then: “Your brother and your sister _need you,_ Scott Ryder _. Come home_.”

 

The silence that follows _that_ is long, indeed. And soft. But it grows harder. Flatter. Unmovable.

 

“I should go. Tell Vetra I said hey, and give the Sammich my love.”

 

“Scott—for God’s sake! For _your_ sake, and the sake of the people you love and who love you back . . . _don’t do this_.”

 

“Bye, Sara.”

 

Scott ends the call and shoves the phone into his left pocket. Then he makes a fist, driving it toward the window pane . . . only to halt it at the last second, millimeters away from shattering the glass and earning himself a trip to the E.R.

 

By the time he lowers his fist and turns away from his distracted sky-gazing—digging out his phone to make another call—Reyes has gone quietly back to his bedroom, lost in more speculation.

 

As puzzle pieces shift and converge, forming a picture he can almost see clearly, he sheds his soiled clothes and reclines in bed to wait. He _looks_ utterly relaxed and innocently horny—prone in the pillows and tenting out the cotton sheets formidably—but anyone who knows Reyes Vidal even a _little_ would agree that the man in question is grim, armed, and ready for a showdown.

 

#

 

Reyes has been waiting for longer than two minutes, but less than five, when Scott prowls into the bedroom, all coiled, sensual strength and confidence.

 

His gaze on Reyes is molten, but otherwise flat. Hard and sharp and acquisitive. Like he has a mind to do some taking of his own.

 

Smirking, Reyes quirks a curious eyebrow—he’s amused and on edge at the same time, but he can’t deny that he’s of a mind to let the other man _try_.

 

After, of course, they settle the matter of their future together, and Scott’s past. The sort of make-or-break minutiae that Reyes habitually avoided with previous lovers.

 

Not that those lovers compared in any way, with this moody, mercurial, _difficult_ . . . _enchanting_ underdog. . . .

 

Scott is hard, a fact that’s neither hidden nor hindered by those slinky-cool gray jeans. He stops at the foot of Reyes’s bed, one mangler-hand absently cupping his hard-on as he stares down at Reyes with those angry-hungry eyes. In the light of morning, they’re a capricious, dancing gold.

 

His shoulders are broad and smooth and steady, his arms and hands ridiculously powerful and enticingly dangerous. His proud, intense face could be formed of one solid piece of ancient copper.

 

Still smirking, Reyes gives Scott a blatant once-over that’s equal parts challenge and disdain. “See something you like, Ryder?”

 

“You could say that,” Scott agrees, his voice as casual and relaxed as the rest of him obviously is _not_.

 

“I just did,” Reyes cranks up the smirk, “so, why don’t you man-up and come get some?”

 

Flicker-flash-flare in those eyes . . . they’re as dangerous as the mangler-hands, but in a different way. A way that Reyes has few defenses against and that Scott wields both effortlessly and obliviously.

 

“I thought _you_ were ringmastering this sideshow,” Scott says, not quite a question. He’s stroking himself, now, through the damned jeans. “Mr. Big-Bad-Alpha-Top.”

 

Reyes shrugs and does some stroking of his own. Scott’s eyes predictably tick to the hard-on tenting out the sheets, his eyes flickering hard-soft-hard, want-need-want.

 

“In relationships of any kind, power works best not as a polar struggle or stalemate, but as an . . . exchange, of sorts,” Reyes informs Scott, only for the younger man to look utterly confused . . . either by this surprising philosophy coming from his older, Dominant lover, or by the notion that he, Scott, could have _any_ power that didn’t originate from his suicidal focus and determination, and from his mangler-hands.

 

“Are,” he begins slowly, as if picking his way through a minefield, “are you implying that you’d let me top you?”

 

“I’m implying that _I_ don’t always have to be the one holding all the cards in this . . . arrangement. Either in bed or out. I’m implying that we can exchange power and control as often as necessary or wanted. I’m implying . . . that you can take _both_ when you _need_ to, whether you top or not. You just need to assert yourself and take what you want and need, the way you want and need it. And, of course, trust that I’ll happily go along.” Reyes smiles, a bit sadly, when Scott looks more confused than ever. “Scott, what I’m implying—what I’m _saying_ , is . . . _yes_. I’m willing to be topped by you, if that’s what you want. If that’s what you _need_. _I can be_ whatever you need, _whenever_ you need it.”

 

For a few moments, Scott’s face is utterly nonplussed and vulnerable as he catches on. As the world he’s just beginning to understand is shaken, then turned on its head.

 

His hand falls away from his undeterred hard-on and Scott hangs his head for a minute.

 

“What _is this_ , Reyes?” he asks with sudden and brittle weariness. “What do you want from me? What do you _want_?”

 

“What I _want_ _is_ , among other things, for you to be open with me. To be _honest_ with me,” Reyes replies, fully aware of the irony and sheer chutzpah of a man like him demanding those things from _anyone_. “I want you to tell me the who, what, and why of Scott Ryder, without me having to pick away at you like a stubborn lock. I want . . . I want you to _be with me_. To trust me. To let me help you. To let _your_ obsessions and ambitions become _mine_ , also. I want to do the same with you.”

 

Scott’s shoulders tense, muscles coiling even more as Reyes watches. But Scott still doesn’t look up.

 

His fists clench tightly, loosen, then tighten again. But Scott still doesn’t look up.

 

“You heard,” is all he says, when a few uncomfortable minutes have passed.

 

Reyes doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t directly answer, but doesn’t deny, either. “I _understand_ secrets, Scott. I _am_ secrets, when you get down to it. Strip them away, and I’m little more than great hair, smoldering Latin charm, and a fantastic smile.” His smirk turns into a grin when Scott snorts gently, still staring at the kicked-down duvet at the foot of the bed. But as Scott continues to memorize the fabric, Reyes’s grin fades. “I need you to not only be with me, lay with me, and sleep next to me. I need to you to _trust me_ enough to share the things your gut tells you to keep hidden. To make some compromises regarding your . . . long-term goals.

 

“I need you to put you, me, _and_ _us_ before your obsession with vengeance.”

 

Scott _really_ tenses up, now, his strong-featured face turning down in a ferocious frown.

 

“You have _no_ _right_ to demand that,” he grits out, fists clenching tight-tight-tight. “You have no right to _ask_ _it_ , even. You don’t know, Reyes . . . you _don’t_ _know_.”

 

“I have _every_ right, Ryder,” Reyes insists calmly, stonily. On _this_ , he will not yield. For Scott’s sake and his own. “Every right to a lover who values a life with me, over a noble, pointless death.”

 

Clench-release-clench of those mangler-hands and Scott’s shaking his head.

 

“If you want that, then you probably don’t want _me_.”

 

“You’re _everything_ I want,” Reyes says simply, and Scott shivers. His fists release almost unwillingly. “Even the part of you that’s raging and despairing and scared, and maybe always will be.”

 

“I . . . can’t give you that part of myself, Reyes. I’d rather _die_ than burden you with that side of me. Or burden Sara . . . or Sam. No, the only way is for me to see this through. I _need_ to. . . .” now, those fists are clenched so tight, Reyes can hear them creak. “I _have_ to do this,” Scott whispers. “For my family. For my father.”

 

“Your father’s dead.”

 

“And his killer’s still strutting around, winning titles and reaping benefits that stem _directly_ from the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man!” Scott barks, looking up at last. His face isn’t, as Reyes expects, angry. It’s _anguished_. So shattered and damaged, it’s breathtaking in the worst way. “You don’t know what my sister and I had to _do_ to keep our family together after Dad died. You don’t know . . . and Sammy was only four—his autism hadn’t even been diagnosed, yet, but we knew he was different . . . _brilliant_ . . . but _different_. Our mother had died when he was born and all he _knew_ was Dad. He didn’t—or _couldn’t_ —understand why his only parent had to go away and never come back. He _still_ doesn’t. He doesn’t understand why _I’m_ not around anymore, either, but . . . I _have_ to do this. For him and for Sara. For them.”

 

“For _you_.”

 

Scott bends a narrow glare on Reyes that’s as much confirmation as it is warning. Reyes meets that glare, calmly, and unafraid.

 

“Believe me, Ryder, I’m _all_ _for_ selfish pursuits, irrational obsessions, and self-destructive ambition. That’s all _I’ve_ ever known. But _you_? You know _better_. You _are_ _better_. Lie to yourself, if you must, and if it gets you through the day. But don’t lie to _me_ , as I can assure you . . . you’re not skilled enough to pull it off. And never will be.”

 

Scott’s mouth drops open, then clicks shut, his tight jaw working as he stares at Reyes. Stares _into_ him.

 

“You’re trying to chip away at me. Distract me. Make me doubt the only purpose my life has ever had,” he decides with that surprising, out-of-left-field incisiveness. Reyes smirks.

 

“Yes, but . . . only if it’s working,” he admits, then, under Scott’s renewed glare, sighs and shakes his head, spreading his hands as if to prove he’s defenseless. “Vengeance is _not_ the only purpose your life has. I’m trying to open your eyes to that, Scott. You crave this vengeance like you crave oxygen. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s . . . human.” With a shrug, Reyes leans back in his pillows. “But there’s the _hard_ way to get what you need . . . and the _smart_ way. The former is what you’re doing, as of now. Going it alone. But if you’re willing to unclench and be _open_ with me . . . _share_ your obsession and who you _really_ are under all that rage and pain and loyalty to a dead man . . . we can be obsessed _together_ , and handle it the smart way. But the only chance any of that has of working . . . is if we put each other first and foremost.”

 

“You . . . you wanna _help me_ avenge my father?” Scott’s voice and face are hopeful and scared. “You wanna help me take that bastard _down_?”

 

“ _Want_ to? No,” Reyes says dryly. “But I _will_ , if that’s one of those things you need . . . and it seems to me that it is. What I _won’t_ help you do is get yourself killed in the ring, like your father. I won’t help you commit _suicide_ , Scott.”

 

Scott flushes and looks down again. Reyes expects a huffy denial or some sort of angry justification. What he gets is a shaky sigh.

 

“You think I _wanna_ die, Reyes?”

 

“I think you’re _ready_ to, whether you want to or not. Resigned to it. _I_ think that you think your only purpose is to avenge your father’s death or die trying. I think _you_ think that once that’s over, for good or ill, you won’t have a purpose or place in this world, anymore.”

 

Scott’s deep, shuddering breath is all the answer Reyes needs. He sits up again and leans forward.

 

“I _won’t_ help you commit suicide,” he reiterates, grim and final. “I won’t give you permission to get yourself killed because the thought of out-living your life’s obsession is too painful and scary for you. But I _will_ help you revenge yourself and your family on this man, and after that’s done, we’ll figure out your purpose _together_. _Our_ purpose. But we go at it _my_ way. The _smart_ way. And you _don’t_ get to die in a haze of blood and glory.”

 

Scott looks up once more, his pale-gold eyes shining and brimming, and still scared and hopeful. “But you don’t even know. . . .” he says again, choked and miserable, and Reyes lifts a hand to stop him.

 

“Then _tell_ _me_. _Show me_. Take your time, if you have to, but _let me in_.”

 

Scott blinks, slow and pained. “I . . . I should never have . . . from the moment you stepped into that prep-room, I _knew_. I knew you were _dangerous_. That if _anyone_ could make me doubt myself and my mission . . . it’d be _you_.” He barks a hysterical sort of laugh. “I _knew_. And after that fight with Jaal . . . I knew that if I didn’t walk away from you then, I’d _never_ be able to. That if I stayed, I’d wind up doing _whatever_ it took—even giving up my only purpose—to _keep staying_. That if I went home with you, it’d be too late to give you up. But I was wrong.”

 

Every part of Reyes capable of sinking, falling, caving in on itself, begins to do just that. Until Scott shakes his head again a few seconds later. “I was _so_ wrong. I see that, now. It was too late _way_ before that. Before the blowjob. Maybe before we met, even.” His voice low and helpless with guilt and shame, he steps forward and sits on the edge of the bed, half-turned toward Reyes, his gaze firmly on his own bent knee. “If you asked me to, I would, y’know? Give it up. Let that bastard go free. Do my best to not crave the fight and the rage and the _focus_ , like I do. _If_ you asked me to. . . .”

 

Reyes pushes aside the sheets and crawls up the huge bed, until he’s kneeling behind Scott. He places his hands on those strong, but weary, bowed shoulders. Squeezing, and spiraling. Up-up-and-away.

 

“I won’t,” he promises around giddiness and what may even be _giggles_. Reyes Vidal does _not_ giggle. _Ever_. “Not unless it threatens to destroy you completely. I said _anything_ and _everything_ , and I _mean_ it. I’ll never _not_ mean it. The only thing I _won’t_ _ever_ give you, is permission to die.”

 

The slumped shoulders under his hands straighten and square a bit, and Scott chuckles. Tired, but amused. Fond, even. When he glances back at Reyes, his eyes are wide and impossible to look away from. “Not ever, huh?”

 

“Nope. Never.”

 

“Reyes . . . if I _have_ to choose between my vengeance, and _you_ —the way I feel when I’m _with_ _you—_ I choose _you_ ,” Scott murmurs with exhausted, but serene finality. As if he’s come to _the_ decision of his life, made it, and made peace with it. “I _choose you_ and . . . I _don’t_ regret it.”

 

Reyes leans down until his forehead rests against Scott’s. The younger man smells like nothing more than himself—autumn and cinnamon—and Reyes. That horrid body-spray reek has thankfully faded to nothing.

 

“And does that lack of regret . . . scare you?”

 

“You mean, do I regret _not_ having regret?” Scott snorts again. “No, Reyes. I don’t. In the end, it comes down to which I’d rather live without. And maybe this is . . . too soon and too much, but . . . I’d rather have _you_ for every minute of every day for the rest of my life, than Archon Jones’s head on a fucking plate.”

 

Scott’s voice, however, hardens when he says that last bit, his breath whistling in and out of his nose. But Reyes is sitting back, surprise writ large on his face.

 

“Your father . . . was _The Pathfinder_ ,” he says in a voice gone soft with awe and a little fear. Reyes has never _really_ believed in destiny or any of that shit . . . but the only thing he believes in _less_ is sheer coincidence.

 

Meanwhile, Scott is sitting back a bit, too, his eyes wistful, now.

 

“Yeah. _Yes_. My father was Alec Ryder. _The Pathfinder_.” Smiling a little, he chuckles again. “Came up with that ring-name, himself. When he got started fighting, his first manager, Merriweather, wanted him to call himself _The Chief_ or _Cochise_ , or some stereotypical bullshit like that.” Scott huffs ruefully. “Fucking _Cochise_! Not even the right part of the continent, let alone the right Nation!” Another huff. “And he _might’ve_ gone along with it, too, if Mom hadn’t pitched a bitch, and insisted he respect our collective heritage and try a _little_ harder to be original.”

 

Reyes says nothing, merely stares at his lover and tells himself that there may not be such a thing as _destiny_ , but that _providence_ may be a different story, entirely.

 

“Reyes?” Scott finally asks, leaning in again to kiss Reyes’s lips tenderly, sweetly. His voice is low and warm with blanket-reassurance, and he sits back again, just enough to study Reyes’s face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing, Scott. Nothing’s _wrong_ , I just . . . I’m trying to figure out some angles regarding your . . . _our_ mission.”

 

Scott’s smile turns affectionate and tremulous, trusting and more than a little amazed. _Admiring_. Reyes has no prior frame of reference for being in love, and supposes that the very unfamiliarity of what he feels for _Scott_ may contain answers, should he find himself brave enough to ask the right questions. “Spinning your wheels, already, huh, Mr. Vidal?”

 

“Of course,” Reyes responds, returning that smile with a smirk, even as his brain—once more compartmentalizing: this time, it’s his head from his _heart_ . . . his inkling of how to work on their problem, from his depth of feeling for Scott—shunts several _very_ interesting bits of knowledge and avenues to explore, to his subconscious. There to be chewed on and examined by the part of him that’s _always_ looking for angles and opportunities.

 

The rest of him, however, focuses on the earnest young man gazing into his eyes as if he’s found answers there to his _own_ questions.

 

Reyes cups Scott’s face in his hands and takes his time initiating and perpetuating a kiss that ends when the sun is markedly higher in the sky and they’re prone on the bed, with Scott pinning Reyes under his strong, hard body. Reyes has pushed down the flattering, but inconvenient jeans just far enough so he can grip Scott’s ass hard and tight, while the other man grinds down against him.

 

“ _Reyes_ ,” he breathes desperately against Reyes’s throat, between nips and licks at the fragile skin covering his jugular. Reyes chuckles between panting and groaning, rumbling his dedication and approval.

 

“ _Anything_ , Scott,” he exhales, doing some grinding of his own, up against Scott’s abs—his _ridiculous_ , mouth-watering definition. Scott’s cock, hard and hot, prods at his balls, then lower and lower, still, with every slow, hard, truncated thrust. “And _everything_. _Whatever_ you need.”

 

Moaning, Scott sits up a bit to stare down into Reyes’s eyes, hesitant and uncertain. “I need . . . can I. . . ?” he frowns and drops his gaze to Reyes’s chin.

 

Smiling, Reyes frees his right hand from Scott’s ass and tips the other man’s face back up, until their eyes meet once more. “You can. You _will_. And, after all this _delightful_ teasing and humping, I’m afraid I must _insist_.”

 

Scott’s face is adorably bemused as Reyes flails at the night table on his right—to where _Scott_ must have moved the now-closed tube of lube, since Reyes hadn’t been in any state to think that practically earlier—and once he retrieves the tube, he presses it into Scott’s left hand.

 

“This _is_ what you need, right?” Reyes asks with a touch of uncertainty after a minute, during which Scott merely alternates between staring at Reyes’s face and at the lube in his hand. “What you . . . want?”

 

“More than anything,” Scott confirms with his intensely raw brand of sincerity. It leaves no room for doubt, and Reyes smiles again.

 

“Then, it’s yours, Ryder. _However_ you want it,” he says, aiming for the same sort of sincerity, if not _quite_ that level of intensity. Scott’s brow furrows briefly and he takes a deep, steadying breath.

 

“I want . . . that is, I’d _like_ _to_. . . .” he swears under his breath, sharp and frustrated, before biting his lip and sighing. When Reyes reaches up to cup his cheek with patient encouragement, Scott takes another deep breath and tries again, his gaze still lowered. “Can I . . . be _gentle_ with you, sometimes? I mean . . . like, _right now_? Please?” Scott’s voice cracks and he hangs his head, but not before Reyes sees the utter consternation on his emotive—how had Reyes _ever_ found it _unreadable_?—conflicted face. “Can _we_ be gentle with _each other_? It doesn’t have to be _all the time_ , or anything, just . . . now and then. Once in a while. . . ? I . . . _that’s_ what I want most of all. To . . . be _gentle_ with someone. To be gentle with _you_.”

 

Reyes doesn’t, for once, know what to say. For so long that Scott’s eyes meet his again, wary and reluctant.

 

“I mean . . . if you just wanna stick with the power-play and rough-stuff, that’s fine, too . . . I have _no_ complaints, just—”

 

“Scott,” Reyes finally manages to say, and the younger man falls silent, alert and attentive. For half a minute that’s really a brief eternity, Reyes doesn’t know what to follow up his lover’s name with. Then, when eloquence continues to desert him, gives up his usual facility and suaveness as a bad and unnecessary job, with a hapless shrug and another grin. “If the concepts of _anything_ and _everything_ are giving you _trouble_ , Scott, we can search for a thesaurus, instead of screwing. Spend the morning expanding your vocabu—”

 

Before Reyes can finish his snarky, asinine statement, Scott’s bodily pinning him again. Kissing him again. Grinding slow-hard-sweet against him again. Reyes moans and brackets Scott’s thighs with his own, wrapping his arms around Scott’s neck and throwing his head back into his pillows as he hands over his power without anxiety or reserve.

 

He can, he knows, trust Scott Ryder until the end of the world. Perhaps even beyond.

 

“Hmm . . . you have _bad_ taste in men,” Scott notes some time later, as he presses two slick fingers between Reyes’s cheeks, to his entrance. He circles it with tortuous teasing, and inward feints, devouring Reyes’s every reaction, and chuckling when the older man arches up against him wantonly and shamelessly. “ _Such_ bad taste.”

 

“The _worst_ ,” Reyes agrees breathlessly, near-mindless as Scott’s teeth gain purchase in his neck and, at the same time, his index finger begins the careful, slow push _in_. “The _absolute_ _worst_.”

 

TBC


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Another_ night and _another fight_ . . . of a slightly different kind. The sweet aftermath, and . . . everything else fades to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Implied murder and illegal activities. Implied conspiracy to commit murder.

 

“You look like you’re waiting for someone.”

 

Reyes smirks at his dapper reflection in the prep-room mirror, giving himself a sardonic wink before turning to face the door to the room, in which lingers his smiling, waiting lover.

 

Quirking his right eyebrow, Reyes gives Scott a blatant and appreciative once over, caressing with his admiring eyes those broad, strong shoulders; the hard, striking definition of his chest, stomach, and abdomen; the thickly-muscled arms; and the lean, long legs.

 

In nothing but a pair of cobalt-blue and white shorts, and the ubiquitous red boots—carrying the gloves, since he’ll only let Reyes or John add this last and most important of his fight accoutrements—Scott Ryder is every inch a professional heavyweight boxer on-the-rise: brutally powerful, implacably solid, and effortlessly graceful.

 

“That depends,” Reyes drawls suggestively. “My lover and I have this . . . pre-fight ritual, of sorts, that I was beginning to be _certain_ he’d miss, for the first time in almost a year, he was running so late.”

 

Scott widens his eyes with faux-surprise, but the corners of his spare, mobile mouth are twitching. “Is that so? Well, that’d be a shame. A man’d have to be certifiable to leave a gorgeous guy like _you_ waiting.”

 

“That’s entirely true, but . . . my lover’s worth a little waiting.” Reyes’s smirk slips into a smile that’s much more frequent and natural, these days, and Scott returns it, bright and unreserved, entering the room proper, and shutting and locking the door behind him.

 

Getting caught in their ritual just once by a very unamused John had been an unforgettable object lesson to them both.

 

Privacy seen to, Scott approaches Reyes with his heart in his eyes and on his figurative sleeve, his posture straight and strong, but relaxed. He crosses the prep-room—far different from the converted supply closet of the makeshift arena in _Tartarus_ . . . this is a dedicated prep-room that was never anything else, in an arena that is clean, well-lit, airconditioned, and _packed_ with spectators—with lowered eyes and demure confidence. But, also, with that bare, raw, unhidden intensity that Reyes can read so well.

 

Still, however, Scott has been known to surprise him—oh, so pleasantly, on quite a few occasions—so Reyes is careful to never neglect this integral part of the ritual.

 

“What do you need tonight, Ryder?” he asks, with stilted restraint. His voice is his tell, in this: he not only _knows_ what Scott needs on _this_ particular night, during this particular ritual . . . he’s in a prime mood to _give it to him_. And then some.

 

Once he’s just outside of Reyes’s personal bubble, Scott looks up again, his amber eyes content and utterly open. The trust and confidence _in Reyes_ that shines out of them, as always, is breathtaking and arousing. Reyes, already hard when Scott had finally arrived, gets even harder.

 

“I _really_ need to be on my knees for you,” Scott breathes, husky and hungry—desperate to be controlled and conquered. To submit and be taken. Just as Reyes is hungry and desperate to be the one who does the controlling and conquering. To accept that total and joyous submission, and _take_ all that Scott has and all that he _is_.

 

Down to the last molecule in the breath currently sustaining him.

 

“Hmm,” Reyes hums, nevertheless, as if thinking it over. This, too, is part of their ritual. But a brief part. For the sake of Scott’s lingering uncertainties and fears—and Reyes’s own overwhelming need to take what’s being so freely offered—this bit of the ritual is, of desire and necessity, a _short_ bit. “I’m, of course, quite happy to oblige you, Ryder, but . . . it’d be a shame to get lube and come all over those fetching blue shorts. And we know from experience that getting the shorts off over the boots is sheer murder.”

 

Scott’s mouth twitches again. “That’s true. So, it’s a good thing, I guess, that I don’t _need_ to come, right now.”

 

Reyes’s smile slips back into a smirk, once more, at knowing he’s read his lover right yet again. “I see,” he says, glancing down at the fetching blue shorts. Scott’s probably at least half-hard—he _always_ is before a fight, hence the inception of this ritual—but it doesn’t show from this stance and angle. Reyes, however, is pooching out the front of his tailored black slacks noticeably.

 

When he meets Scott’s eyes again, the other man is smirking, too. They know each other very well, indeed, and that thrills Reyes nearly as much as the many games they play, and the different roles they wear while playing them.

 

Nearly.

 

“What do you _need_ tonight, Scott?” Reyes asks again, in a voice that’s thick with his own wants and needs. Scott shivers and his pupils dilate almost visibly.

 

“I need you above me. I need you in my mouth and down my throat as far as you can go. Maybe farther. I need to climb into the ring tonight with your taste on my tongue and your scent in my nose. I need,” Scott pauses for a half-second, his Adam’s-apple bobbing as he swallows reflexively, “to walk into that arena with you on my skin. I need you to _mark_ me, and gimme some reminders I can _feel_ about who I belong to.”

 

Reyes’s mouth curves and quivers between smitten smile and smug smirk, and he closes his eyes for a moment— _just_ a moment—to maintain control for himself and for Scott. They’ve come _this_ far—hundreds of fights, thousands of miles, and countless obstacles thrown in their shared path—without faltering when it matters. Reyes _will_ _not_ let Scott down.

 

Won’t let _either_ of them down.

 

Opening his eyes to Scott’s unleavened adoration and trust, Reyes’s mouth finally settles on the smile. It so frequently does, around Scott.

 

“On your knees, then, Pathfinder,” he commands with steely tenderness. Scott obeys with instant, acquiescent grace, folding slowly, sinuously to his knees, while still holding Reyes’s gaze. When Reyes cups Scott’s face in his right hand, his thumb stroking across those spare, but irresistible lips, Scott parts them—opens his mouth with reverence and welcome. The amber of his irises is just a thin ring around his ink-dark, abyss-deep pupils.

 

As ever, Reyes wonders if this is the time he’ll finally fall into those eyes and never find his way back out. The thought is more comforting than dismaying and, anyway, he more than half-suspects he already has.

 

“John and Garrus will be here at any minute,” Reyes informs his lover with a hint of tsk, still swiping his thumb across Scott’s lower lip. Scott blinks up at him, slow and arch, flicking his tongue out to tease Reyes’s thumb. His face is stark-featured and prominent, in a boyish, unfinished way that Reyes finds winsome. Above those mesmerizing eyes, the trendy, spiky-tousled haircut Scott'd nervously sprung on Reyes shortly before this current, much-publicized tour, shines with a mellow, shadowy brilliance under the fluorescent lights. Reyes wants to touch that hair . . . to rut his way to a quick, dirty release in it—it wouldn’t be the first time—but he has no interest in dealing with the amusement and disapproval of Scott’s manager, _and_ his trainer/substitute father-figure. No interest in weathering Garrus’s knowing and exasperated sighs, and John’s disdainful and hard-bitten glares.

 

Later, then. After Scott’s won this fight, or perhaps in the morning.

 

“Yep. Unlike me, they’re _always_ on time. Which I guess means I’m taking it hard and fast, this time, huh?” Scott asks lightly, but a tad breathlessly. His amber eyes seem to glow simultaneously with an edgy, anxious sort of anticipation, and the towering serenity of a man whose life is, perhaps for the first time, worth fighting to keep. “You know . . . for expediency’s sake?”

 

“Of course,” Reyes allows, his hand sliding slowly, savoringly down to Scott’s bared throat. His thumb rests on the strong, accelerated pulse for a few moments before he applies gentle, but increasing pressure. When Scott moans helplessly, shortly thereafter, Reyes nods his approval. “Hard and fast, I can do, Pathfinder . . . I promise. Now, unzip me . . . and show me how bad you need it.”

 

#

 

The fight goes as well as Reyes expects. _Of course_ , it does. He expects the best, and Scott is nothing, if not the best.

 

And the rest of the world is starting to take notice, and come slowly, but overwhelmingly around to Reyes’s way of thinking.

 

At the end of the evening, Scott takes the champion’s belt. He’s the last contender still standing, if a bit swollen about the right side of the face and listing in that same direction. _Of course_ , he’s still standing. He is, in the way of his father before him, an unstoppable force. He _always_ gets back up, on the rare occasion he goes down, and always will.

 

Reyes believes that more deeply than he believes in anything else. He _has_ to. His sanity will not let him entertain the idea of a _truly_ immovable object out there, somewhere, waiting like doom. Not even the looming specter of Archon Jones.

 

During the cheering and flash photography in the moment of victory, and in the only slightly less hectic aftermath, Scott takes praise and approval from his peers, fans, and the media, in wry, bemused stride, signing autographs when asked—which is often, of late—and posing for pictures with enamored and awe-struck well-wishers.

 

Reyes watches him bear the spotlight with patience and poise, but he can see that underneath the calm, Scott’s obsession is still as flames fanned, his ultimate goal not far from his occasionally brooding mind.

 

For Scott, these moments are briefly dazzling and overwhelming. A dream, come true. . . .

 

But, at some point in the evening, Scott will slowly metabolize the sweet allure of fame and recognition, and re-center himself. Re-commit to the real reason behind the training and practice and perseverance. Behind the struggle and focus.

 

Behind the fight.

 

Every win is a step closer to taking on his father’s killer . . . the current heavyweight champion of the world, Archon Jones. They’re not there, _yet_ —not especially close to _that_ worthy—but they’re getting there.

 

There’s a _Pathfinder_ in the world, again . . . and his name is soon to be on everyone’s lips.

 

But for now, that Pathfinder, sweaty, jittery and almost drunk on adrenaline and victory, gives interviews and soundbites graciously and engagingly, with Garrus at his side, and John and Reyes bringing up the rearguard. Reyes keeps one steadying, possessive hand on the damp small of his lover’s back.

 

And even during those interviews and soundbites—in which Scott is candid about and cognizant of his own talent and meteoric rise, but so sincerely humble about both, that even Reyes, who arguably knows him better than anyone, is amazed by and enchanted with him anew—Scott casts glances back at his lover and his team.

 

 _Don’t let me fly apart_ , those glances say with a mix of whirling giddiness and almost grave self-knowledge. _Don’t let me float away. Keep me here and real, and help me stay myself. Don’t ever let me go. . . ._

 

These looks are cast more at Reyes, of course, than at John and Garrus. Though both trainer and manager, respectively, are dedicated to Scott with the intense and remarkably deep loyalty he seems to inspire in people who know him for any length of time.

 

None more so than Reyes, who returns those glances with a steady gaze, a slight nod, and a small smirk.

 

 _I’ll keep you together and ground you_ , Reyes pledges each and every time. _I’ll keep you close and true to yourself. I will never let you go._

 

Each time, Reyes’s pledge is acknowledged by the soft-love-soft flicker in Scott’s shining eyes before he turns back to whatever interview or post-fight promotion he’d been in the middle of. And he _glows_ in those moments immediately after. He _always_ glows, as far as Reyes is concerned, but in those moments, he’s a lighthouse. A sun. A galaxy . . . the _universe_. Bright enough to draw even the most distant notice, and then keep it with his charming humility, self-deprecating humor and low-key goofiness, and the sort of battered, but undimmed purity that even a tough and tragic life, and keeping company with Reyes Vidal can’t tarnish.

 

“If you and the kid eye-fuck each other any more obviously, they’re gonna have to air those interviews after midnight on Skinemax. Or pay-per-view,” John notes after what Reyes hopes is the final interview is over, one eyebrow raised in exasperation, his dark, intense gaze as close to amused as it ever gets. The former world champion has the sort of game-face even _Reyes_ can’t quite peer behind, and which he suspects no one but Garrus Vakarian, John’s oldest friend—and Reyes further suspects that whatever they are _now_ , they were _once_ lovers, too . . . Scott, however, chooses not to even “go there” because “ _eww_ , Reyes! Boner-killer!”—ever looks past anymore.

 

As Team Ryder makes their way out of the busy, bustling press-room and back to the prep-room, Scott slows his normally long stride to walk next to Reyes, shyly—even after all this time—offering his hand. Reyes takes it, and Scott grins and glows, and . . . is simply gorgeous in his happiness.

 

He leans into Reyes with a soft, contented sigh and Garrus, giving them both that knowing glance, which is, for once, short on exasperation, pulls ahead of the couple. John automatically keeps pace with him. But not without a sigh of his own, put-upon and grumpy.

 

“On the bright side, John, everyone—even the Pathfinder’s fellow fighters—seems to be taking an openly gay colleague in relative stride, with a startlingly few exceptions,” Garrus muses, then shrugs. He’s also, most likely, smiling. Most likely. And, though he _does_ smile more frequently than _John_ does . . . that’s really not saying much. But his rare, surprising laugh—when it comes in the wake of John’s irritable muttering—is deep and full and loud. It draws the gaze of everyone within hearing distance, even distracted, twitterpated Scott and stolid, grim John. “Progress is a beautiful thing, people! Even _five_ years ago, Scott Ryder, you’d have been an impossibility.”

 

“He’s _still_ impossible, if ya ask _me_ ,” the sarcastic trainer grunts bluntly, but his brawny shoulders shake a little, in the way that passes for a chuckle when one is dealing with John “Spectre” Shepard. “And anyway, we wanna keep the focus on Scott’s resume and his potential. On what he brings to the ring. _Not_ on who he’s fucking.”

 

“Or who’s fucking _him_ ,” Garrus adds, his brilliant-blue eyes mischievous in his serious, angular face, as he glances back at his client and said client’s lover. Reyes snorts and smirks. Scott’s coppery face turns even redder. And John, who also glances back at them with a distinctly pained grimace, rolls his eyes and faces forward again, grumbling something that sounds like: _I don’t need this. I’m too old for this crap . . . I coulda retired, even, but noooooo. . . ._

 

When they reach the relatively unpeopled corridor where the prep-rooms are, Scott starts to reach for the doorknob, clearly wanting to get changed into his “civvies” so he and Reyes can go Christen the hotel room they’d barely had time to check into. But before he can open the door, Reyes is tugging him back around and pinning him to the door for a hard, promising, demanding kiss. One that Scott melts into happily, eagerly, and without hesitation.

 

“Ugh,” Reyes hears from his left, along with more of John’s grumbling. But he sounds as rueful and sad as he does grouchy.

 

“Wow.” Garrus’s amused tone is also partly envious and wistful. “To be young, triumphant, and in love. Magical stuff.”

 

When Reyes finally lets Scott up for oxygen, ending their kiss with several smaller, teasing busses, Scott makes a noise that anyone in hearing distance—meaning John and Garrus, and a passing security guard—is probably interpreting as: “Prep-room? Now? _Please_?”

 

“Patience, Pathfinder,” Reyes whispers with even more promise and heat than before, putting a little distance between them, but running one admiring, possessive finger down Scott’s sternum. At the belt Scott’s still wearing, Reyes pauses, and chuckles. “Go get changed and we’ll go back to the hotel.”

 

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Scott breathes, but doesn’t move. Merely leans against the door staring into Reyes’s eyes, the way Reyes is staring into his.

 

“Uh-huh. I’m just gonna take the intense eye-fucking as my cue and am-scray. Don’t wear our boy out _too_ much, Vidal. He’s got more promotional interviews and a photo-shoot in the Ay-Em. Scott . . . try and get at least a _little_ actual sleep? For me? And call if there’re any problems, you two. My phone’s always on. Night, Shep.” With another chuckle and a nudge for John, Garrus is moving off back down the corridor, already on his sleek phone. No doubt to do the kind of wheeling and dealing that even Reyes finds tiring and a bit byzantine.

 

Reyes and John watch him go, the latter with something that’s _not_ an admiring and fond smile, even though it obviously _wants_ to be.

 

Then the gruff trainer is shaking his head and sighing, before stalking off in the same direction as Garrus had, with his customary lack of _good-bye_ , beyond a briefly raised hand.

 

Scott, who’s been busy gazing down at his recently-won belt with bemusement and incredulity, doesn't see that not-smile. But _Reyes_ certainly has. Has _been_ seeing the intensity with which John stares after Garrus increase and become more obvious and yearning. 

 

Garrus . . . ever immaculate in his tastefully expensive suits, with his short, barely-tamed, still-dark curls. He is, from his meticulously professional look to his lanky leanness, John Shepard’s polar opposite. Scott’s trainer is shorter, wider, shaven-headed, always in either jeans or sweatpants. Not to mention wife-beaters that show off no-nonsense, still-conditioned muscles and faded tattoos . . . though, if the weather’s chilly, he'll wear a battered army jacket like Scott’s old one.

 

As John turns left at this level’s reception desk/security checkpoint—probably toward a back stairwell, as usual; Garrus, as ever had gone the opposite way, toward the elevators—Reyes leans in to murmur to Scott.

 

“Five hundred bucks says they’re fucking each other again by the end of this tour.”

 

Scott looks up, making a piteously grossed-out face. “Ah, _c’mon_ , Reyes . . . not _this_ again,” he mumbles, shuddering melodramatically. Reyes chuckles, sliding an arm around Scott’s waist and pulling the younger man against him once more. Despite his pouting, Scott goes, as always, with gratitude, relief, and affection, nuzzling Reyes’s neck and jaw.

 

“What? Afraid of losing your shirt, Pathfinder?” Reyes whispers on Scott’s cheek, and this time, the shudder is real and accompanied by a soft moan. Between them, the champion’s belt is body-warmed, but hard and implacable, as is the erection Reyes has trapped against it.

 

“Wrong item of clothing, but with you? Always,” Scott replies dryly, then: “And a _thousand_ bucks says you’re wrong. Like, even _more_ wrong about them than usual, you nosy pervert.”

 

“You flatter me _so_ _shamelessly_ , Ryder,” Reyes tsks with a fond and only half-jokingly sappy sigh. He leans in again to kiss Scott’s temple, a contented rumble escaping his chest as Scott’s mangler-hands settle on his ass and squeeze. “Also . . . you’re on.”

 

#

 

When Scott tops Reyes, he tends to do so in silence . . . as if not wanting to miss a single sound Reyes makes as Scott drives himself home repeatedly with deep, powerful, intent thrusts.

 

His is the reverent silence of a man who has found and entered his chosen house of worship.

 

When Reyes tops _Scott_ , Scott is . . . rather more vocal, to put it delicately. Reyes is always flattered and amazed at the sounds he’s able to wring from his lover. Sheer fascination with and addiction to Scott’s sweet, soft moans or low, ravenous groans, does more to keep Reyes from ending prematurely—does more to keep him _hard_ and hungry—than any vaunted self-control.

 

Tonight, Reyes is topping from the bottom, as sometimes happens after Scott’s more important matches—what Scott calls “boss-fights”—letting his lover ride him in the slightly too-soft hotel bed. Despite the demands of his body, Reyes is, ostensibly, directing matters: telling Scott what, when, and how hard and fast. But really . . . he’s just watching. Watching the light shining in through the picture window—the only illumination in their room—play on Scott’s face and body. Watching muscles shift and roll, tense and flex, relax and stretch . . . the way the ones in Scott's arms bunch and cord, and the way the ones in his thighs quiver and tremble. Watching the rocking, the shimmying, the undulation of his hips. Watching the devoted awe on his face as he _watches Reyes back_ , his eyes as dark and bright as the galaxy that whirls above them unseen . . . but felt. Always felt.

 

Reyes watches all this, alternately clutching at those taut thighs with hot, worshipful hands or brushing sweat- and come-smeared abs with wondering, reverent fingertips. . . .

 

Scott’s already come once, since they stumbled into their hotel room, kissing and clutching at each other. Neither of them had stopped to undress beyond opening flies and shoving down trousers _just enough_. With a look of smoldering challenge in his eyes, Scott had crawled up the bed, and waited patiently on his hands and knees for Reyes to find one of the many tubes of lube they’d stashed around the suite.

 

“Ohhh,” Scott had sighed breathlessly as Reyes, knowing what his lover could take and what he needed, pressed two slippery fingers against Scott, then _into_ him. Then, some gasp-, sigh-, and grunt-filled minutes later, Scott was fucking himself back on three of Reyes’s fingers—at Reyes’s breathy, gritted-out command—with unself-conscious abandon, making noises that’d wake the dead. No doubt, the _living_ in the immediately adjacent rooms were bearing witness to the commencement of this _divine_ unmaking.

 

Scott’s thighs were spread wide, his head hanging as he leaned into the pleasure and pain, taking both with eagerness and greed. Reyes had, even then and as always, been riveted by the sight of this. The sight of Scott letting himself be unraveled, unmade, and undone. Letting his control be stripped from him like weighty, unwanted armor.

 

Reyes’s other hand had alternated between holding Scott open and stroking his own lube- and precome-wet cock, until, finally, Reyes was done with merely _watching_. He’d removed his fingers and, before Scott’d even had a chance to lament their loss with one of those sweet, breathless moans, replaced them with his cock. He took Scott in one slow, steady thrust that drew a loud, exultant moan from his lover’s now-hoarse throat . . . then a wavering, broken-open cry as Reyes drove the last third of his cock home, hard and fast.

 

“My brave, beautiful, strong Pathfinder,” he’d murmured lovingly as he waited out the spasming of Scott’s muscles around him, and Scott had gasped and groaned and hissed. The younger man’s arms were trembling and shaking, even as they bore his weight and some of Reyes’s. His thighs were splayed even wider, as if he wanted Reyes to go as deep as the laws of physics would allow.

 

Smiling at the thought, Reyes’s right hand had left Scott’s hip, even as the left clenched tighter. He’d placed his now-freed hand on the small of Scott’s back, running it down to the ornate tramp-stamp just above his ass. His fingers lingered, with amusement and desire, over the black ink that spelled out his name.

 

(“Happy birthday,” Scott’d said when Reyes had, while bending Scott over the dining room table in the middle of _Reyes’s own_ birthday dinner, exclaimed over this final and unexpected present. “Hope ya like it.”

 

Tracing the stark, fresh ink and puffy skin very lightly, Reyes had been unable to take his eyes off it or Scott. Had been unable to respond in words for so long, Scott began to fidget

 

Finally, Reyes had chuckled and said: “Why, Ryder . . . you named your _ass_ after _me_? I’m . . . flattered and touched. And possibly concerned. . . ?”

 

“You’re a _dick_ , is what,” Scott had responded, laughing, then groaning as Reyes began the delightful task of fingering him open. His eyes were still locked on his name on Scott’s flesh, his mind quite discombobulated, even though his body, as always, knew _exactly_ what to do to please and prepare his lover. “Such— _oh, fuck!_ —a _dick_ , and I _hate_ you.”

 

“I hate you, too,” Reyes had said tenderly, brushing the ink once more, while he pushed the fingers of his other hand deeper into the welcoming body that now belonged to him more completely than even his own.)

 

Stepping out of that lovely memory, Reyes had stared down at his ownership in writing and in flesh, riveted, as always. “All mine,” he’d murmured.

 

“Yep,” Scott had agreed instantly, shivering as Reyes traced the “Y” deliberately. “Yours. Always. All of me. However you want me.”

 

“Any way I can get you, Scott,” Reyes had said plainly. In these moments, even _he_ couldn’t keep up the _Reyes Vidal_ -front that the world saw, but which Scott saw _beyond_. “Just like this.”

 

Suffice it to say that through design and demand, that first screw had been more of a sprint than a marathon.

 

After a sweet, eternal afterglow and refractory time in each other’s arms, during which they mumbled about the things that weighed on their minds—a little about Sara’s, Sam’s, and Vetra’s upcoming visit to Heleus City and Kadara . . . about which Scott was touchingly anxious; and a little _more_ about Reyes’s ongoing restructuring of the power framework of Kadara, since his quiet and deadly coup against Sloane Kelly—and caressed each other with loving, tender hands. But _Scott’s_ hand had shortly begun meandering down to Reyes’s more than half-hard cock.

 

“Ready for round two, stud?” he’d asked hopefully, nuzzling Reyes’s Adam’s-apple. Reyes had chuckled, completely losing his train of thought regarding some detail of his business that Keema would, no doubt, catch, even if he didn’t. She was an able and relatively trustworthy lieutenant/face for the business. Also, she found Reyes’s continued preoccupation with _Scott_ romantic and sweet. And—for some reason—took it as a sign that Reyes was, ultimately, an honorable man.

 

For the moment, Reyes had no plans to disabuse his lieutenant of this notion.

 

“You’re going to kill me before I’m forty,” he’d decided after Scott had stroked him to full hardness, then climbed astride him . . . impaling himself with obvious and tortuously slow relish. “Possibly even before my _next_ birthday.”

 

“Is that a complaint?”

 

Smirking up into that too-innocent face and those intense, yearning eyes, Reyes had settled his hands on Scott’s thighs again, and bucked up into him hard and sharp. Scott’s eyelashes fluttered, but he managed to keep his eyes open and on Reyes’s.

 

“Merely an observation, Pathfinder.”

 

Though, after that, Reyes hadn’t been doing much else in the way of observation as Scott took direction, and took what he needed. So, so beautifully.

 

 _Now_ , as Scott continues to ride him with flattering and affecting dedication, and focus, Reyes smirks up at his lover. Scott grins back, his eyes darting down to Reyes’s chest. To _his_ _own_ _name_ , in ink, over Reyes’s heart.

 

The tattoo is still sharp, still a bit puffy, still healing. But also “still bad-ass . . . and not scabby and gross, _yet_ , you fucker!”

 

(In spite of his pleasure at Reyes’s rather sappy gift, Scott tends to get a bit disgruntled that _Reyes’s_ healing time is so far lacking in itching, and all but very minor discomfort.)

 

“Fuck, but I love you so much,” Scott says now, still grinning, but with his brow furrowed in both dismay and wonderment. But it isn’t long before the dismay fades, leaving behind just the wonderment. Scott’s deadly, mangler-hand hovers over Reyes’s heart, his blunt, capable fingers kissing the place where the “S” becomes the “C” with grave tenderness. “I love you _so goddamn much_ , it _kills_ me.”

 

“The feeling’s mutual,” Reyes assures Scott, squeezing his thighs firmly, briefly stilling those jumping muscles. Scott’s eyes meet his own again and that grin softens into an expression of earnest vulnerability that will _always_ startle Reyes. Always _shatter_ his own self-control like a wrecking ball to a tin shed. “But what a way to go, eh?”

 

“There’re millions worse,” Scott agrees, his muscles flutter-clench-convulsing around Reyes in sexual semaphore, “But _none_ better.”

 

“Such a dewy-eyed romantic you are, Pathfinder!” Reyes tsks, driving himself up into Scott hard, and at an angle that makes Scott gasp hard and clench even tighter, as he attempts to moan Reyes’s name.

 

Himself on the edge—dragged there by Scott’s need and desire and voracity . . . and by the possessive clutch of those tight, powerful muscles—Reyes chuckles breathily, licking his lips and smirking. Dazed and poleaxed . . . but smirking, nonetheless.

 

“Now, come for me,” he commands, his voice barely louder than a whisper. But then, it doesn’t need to be. “Show me how much you love this.” _How much you love_ me. . . .

 

“ _Reyes_ ,” Scott whimpers as his body instantly locks down on Reyes’s cock and, a second later—their gazes at last breaking as he throws his head back in a silent cry—he begins to come: untouched and uncontrolled, and seemingly endless.

 

This, too, Reyes watches, his face awed and in-love, maskless and open in a way even _Scott’s_ never seen. He watches and watches for eternal moments until his own control is blown away completely, and his body rushes toward release. Toward the timeless place where Scott waits for him—waits to shelter and _keep_ Reyes in the sweet, splendid heart and wild, beautiful innocence that is the core of who Scott Ryder is and always will be.

 

And for precious eternities, he’ll fold that sweet splendor and wild beauty . . . that _innocence_ around Reyes. And—for precious eternities— _Reyes_ will become all those things, _too_. He’ll _become_. . . .

 

“Love you, too, Scott,” he exhales as the world and everything in it is washed clean by warm, white light. Then washed _away, entirely_ , as—for an unknown, but blissful and infinite span—Reyes ceases to _become_ and simply _is_. And _Scott_ _is_ , with him.

 

That’s all Reyes Vidal knows and all he _needs_ , for the moment: the warm light of Scott’s love and presence, surrounding and illuminating his shadowed heart, and the knowledge that these shining pieces of utter perfection are _his_ to hold and cherish _forever_.

 

Forever.

 

Everything else fades to black.

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! Thank you for cheering me, and this odd, violent, kinky, completely-out-of-left-field fic on (especially stitchcasual, Ghostofshe, and Hotot). Thank you for your comments . . . which I will answer after a day or so to recharge.
> 
> Just . . . _thank you_. Muchly  <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hotot’s Prompt: [Oh, and baby, I'm fist-fighting with fire Just to get close to you. Can we burn something, babe? And I run for miles just to get a taste. Must be love on the brain.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RyInjfgNc4)
> 
> And for amazing [Reyder](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11215254), check out that link for stitchcasual's work in the fandom!
> 
> And see yours, truly, here, or on [The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


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